Building performance audit: arbitrating your commercial assets in 12 weeks
Obligations to reduce energy consumption across the commercial building stock, requirements arising from employment law, RGAA compliance: a regulatory framework that applies directly to your asset.
The energy savings identified during a Kytom building performance audit only materialise if the BMS is genuinely taken over by the operator: the audit quantifies the potential and the action plan, in line with the milestones of the tertiary decree OPERAT (ADEME, OPERAT platform). The mission objectively assesses the technical, energy and usage quality of a commercial asset in 12 weeks, covering the envelope, the technical lots, Labour Code compliance (R.4222 et seq.), the tertiary decree and perceived comfort, with instrumented measurements of CO2, lux, dB and humidity. Deliverables: a 60 to 120-page report, a prioritisation matrix, cost estimates to plus or minus 10 %, ROI at 3, 5 and 10 years for CFOs, asset managers and real estate departments. The mission comes into play at three pivotal moments: sale/retention arbitration, major renovation programme, 3/6/9 lease renewal.
The French commercial building stock represents approximately 1 billion m² (ADEME, Chiffres clés du bâtiment, 2023 edition), a significant share of which remains energy-intensive in light of the tertiary decree (targets of -40 % consumption by 2030, -50 % by 2040, -60 % by 2050, with annual declaration on the OPERAT platform). For finance departments, the stake goes beyond compliance: a poorly rated building trades at a discount on resale as well as on reletting, and complicates bank renegotiations aligned with the European taxonomy.
The framework used by Kytom combines several bodies of reference:
- Labour Code, articles R.4222 et seq. (ventilation, sanitation, thermal environments).
- Commercial DPE orders and OPERAT declaration (ADEME).
- RGAA for public-access buildings (ERP).
- Voluntary standards: HQE Exploitation (Certivea), BREEAM In-Use (BRE), WELL (IWBI).
On the usage side, commercial assets host an average of 7 hours of presence per day in the office (Actineo, Baromètre de la qualité de vie au bureau, 2023), which makes air quality, acoustics (NF S 31-080:2006) and lighting decisive. The framework ranks critical gaps, non-conformities to be addressed within 12 months and longer-term improvements.
Our reading differs from the OPERAT orthodoxy on one specific point. The profession often treats the tertiary decree as an annual declaratory obligation to be fed at the lowest cost. Across our recent portfolio, we observe the opposite: the assets that will miss the 2030 milestone are those whose real estate department has separated the OPERAT topic, seen as compliance, from the renovation topic, seen as CAPEX. Both must be steered by the same roadmap; failing that, the -40 % milestone becomes mechanically unreachable.”
