CAF Portfolio Certification provides property owners and investors a measurable and effective assurance mechanism that assesses the procurement, management and delivery of contract cleaning services and their effect on cleaners’ working conditions at a portfolio level.
What is Portfolio Certification?
Why CAF-Certify your portfolio?
Investors and governments increasingly expect companies to take action on social risks and modern slavery. This can be a difficult task given the current lack of effective human rights due diligence frameworks and given the complexity of global supply chains. CAF has worked with a community of stakeholders and the property industry to develop an effective and easy to implement mitigation mechanism in the form of Certification.
For owners and investors, Certification will allow them to:
- To engage with innovative CAF Programs that will reduce labour risk
- Demonstrate year-on-year improvement – as is increasingly expected in ESG Reporting
- Create cost efficiencies as compared to certifying assets building-by building through CAF Building Certification
- Identify areas for improvement in procurement and contract management practices, including how to achieve best practice
- Demonstrate human rights due diligence and responsible procurement to investors and shareholders as a product differentiator
Definition of a Portfolio
- The portfolio is made up of at least 2 buildings
- The buildings are classified as either commercial office or retail shopping centre
- At least 20% of the buildings within the portfolio are either CAF-certified, in the process of CAF Certification, or have had an application for CAF Certification accepted
If your portfolio doesn’t meet one or more of these criteria, please reach out to the team to discuss what steps you can take to prepare your portfolio to be CAF-Rated.
1) Benchmarking
Portfolio Rating benchmarks an owner’s portfolio against the CAF Standard and eventually against other portfolios. The owner completes the CAF Rating Tool and the resulting score and performance report will identify areas that need to be addressed to enable certification of their entire portfolio. Learn more about Portfolio Rating.
2) Road map
The Portfolio Certification Pathway Plan is the improvement and certification roadmap tailored for each owner. Owners engage CAF to advise what steps, programs or other activities need to be implemented to achieve full certification of their Portfolio. As each portfolio has unique parameters, the Certification Pathway Plan will also map out timelines and associated implementation fees.
3) Implementation
Responsible Contractor Program addresses the responsibilities and actions of the employers of cleaners, and verification of implementation will be supported through a formal worker engagement and investigation and remediation process overseen by CAF. A key component of this Program is Contractor Prequalification.
Worker Engagement Program provides a cross-portfolio, high-level engagement with all cleaners. This will be delivered online, enabling the inclusion of cleaners located around the country and working for different employers.
Education and Training Program provides short modules and webinars on specific topics relevant to compliance with the CAF Standard. These can be rolled out to supervisory and management staff employed by cleaning contractors and building managers throughout portfolios.
Procurement Program supports responsible contract pricing, to address a key labour risk at the source. CAF assists owners and managers to apply procurement tools such as the CAF Pricing Schedule and model tender response questions and contract clauses; and work through any issues that arise during the tender process.
4) Certified Portfolio Status
A Portfolio is eligible to be CAF-Certified once the Portfolio Certification Pathway Plan has been completed and a re-rating has occurred. In order to maintain Certification, each year the portfolio must go through the Portfolio Rating process.
What might my pathway to Portfolio Certification look like?
Stage 1 (Month 0-6):
- Owner applies and is awarded a CAF Portfolio Rating
Stage 2 (Month 7-18):
- Work with CAF to develop a Portfolio Certification Pathway Plan.
- Implement the elements of the Pathway Plan. This step may include an owner engaging in CAF’s Worker Engagement, Responsible Contractor, Procurement Advisory and or Stakeholder Education Programs.
- A CAF Rating lasts 12 months and needs to be renewed annually. If the Pathway Plan has been implemented, the portfolio may be assessed as meeting the CAF Standard, and therefore becomes Certified. Or owners can improve their score year on year as they progress toward CAF Portfolio Certification.
Certification Fees
Portfolio Certification takes a modular approach so that each owner’s Pathway Plan can be easily tailored to suit the circumstances of individual commercial office and retail portfolios. This means that there is no one size fits all approach and estimates cannot be provided until the Pathway Planning stage. Fees for Portfolio Rating are now available.
Want to know more?
- Contact our team now or submit an EOI
Portfolio Certification questions
How does Portfolio Certification provide the same level of assurance as Building Certification?
As you demonstrated in the table, below, you can compare the key elements of the CAF Standard inherent in Building versus Portfolio Certification. Under a Portfolio approach, different programs targeted at specific supply chain stakeholders combine to reach the same outcome, and therefore enable Certification without the in-depth site-level process taking place throughout the portfolio.
| CAF Standard Domains | Portfolio Certification | Building Certification | |||
| Responsible Contractor Program | Worker Engagement Program | Education & Training Program | Procurement Program | ||
| Responsible procurement | |||||
| Safe work | |||||
| Oversight of contractor compliance | |||||
| Fair employment practices | |||||
| Responsible contracting | |||||
| Worker engagement | |||||
| Remediation | |||||
How does Portfolio Certification differ to Building Certification?
| Portfolio Certification | Building Certification | |
| Applicable assets | Groupings of property assets that are geographically and categorically disparate, and where multiple cleaning contractors and facility management companies may be engaged to provide services. | A single building or precinct (commercial or retail) serviced by a single cleaning contractor/employer of cleaners. |
| HR systems, policies and processes | Assessed at a contractor level through CAF Contractor Prequalification | Assessed at a site level |
| Worker engagement |
UWU holds worker meetings at a sample of worksites annually with each Prequalified contractor. UWU/CAF to engage with workers at a sample of sites within the Portfolio annually. Portfolio owners can apply the CAF Worker Engagement Program to undertake large scale labour rights education and engagement across their portfolio Grievance mechanism available to all workers within the portfolio. |
Delivered at a site level
|
| Responsible procurement | Procurement advice delivered and correct implementation assessed through Portfolio Rating. | Assessed and verified at a site level |
| Investigation and Remediation |
Investigation and remediation of issues relating to cleaners’ employment conditions takes place through CAF Contractor Prequalification. Where issues are raised through CAF Worker Engagement, CAF will provide a report to the entity that has nominated the portfolio for a rating with guidance on investigation and remediation. CAF will receive a report and will determine whether the investigation and remediation undertaken are sufficient to maintain certification. |
CAF Certification involves a process to investigate and remediate issues identified, as well as a requirement to demonstrate ongoing compliance. |
[1] Current, active and non-temporary means core cleaning services are in operation at the time of application and are not a temporary measure (e.g. not a new-build clean, construction clean etc)
[2] Core cleaning services relates to regular base building cleaning and tenancy cleaning where the tenant has opted in to the base building service. The following cleaning services are not included: tenancy procured cleaning, specialised/periodical cleaning services (e.g. high window cleaning, etc) and construction site cleaning.