Sustainability at Plain Concepts: Working to Build a Better World

Sustainability is a concept that has been repeated time and again in recent years. In fact, it is gaining more and more strength. Not only in environmental terms, which is the area with which it is most often linked but also in terms of the economy and society. When a company is committed to sustainability, it concentrates its efforts on the surrounding environment from multiple points of view; for example, it can do so both by protecting forests and cities for future generations and by building a society that is more aware of the materials it uses and the waste it generates.

At Plain Concepts, we are very involved in sustainability, understood as a concept that reaches several areas. Below, we explain how we work with it.

How We Build a More Sustainable Company at Plain Concepts

By our nature and our projects, at Plain Concepts, we know that technology serves to achieve a more sustainable world. That’s why we use cloud environments instead of physical servers in the day-to-day running of our departments.

Our expertise in cloud computing (which reduces costs by up to 40%, in addition to energy consumption and emissions of local servers) also helps us to recommend the use of this more sustainable technology in external projects, as you will see below.

At Plain Concepts we have implemented an environmental management system certified under the UNE-EN ISO 14001:2015 Standard. To contribute to sustainability, we monitor our actions: we calculate the electricity, paper and water we consume and the carbon footprint generated by our activities.

For example, to reduce paper consumption, we encourage all official documents to be signed with a digital certificate. And when we moved to a new office in Madrid in 2022, we took into account that the new building (which has electric car chargers) is LEED certified for energy efficiency and sustainable design and is certified under the ISO 14001 environmental standard.

Our working model is remote and flexible, but for those who want to commute to the office, we recommend using public transportation. By the way, in the offices we separate and manage waste in different spaces, and we have reduced the use of plastic and replaced it with other materials, which we also use in our events and stationery supplies.

Going back to remote and flexible working, this way of working reduces a lot of travel and commuting, which helps reduce carbon dioxide emissions. On a day-to-day basis, we have also developed awareness campaigns among our employees for World Environment Day and the International Day against Climate Change.

Microsoft Partner Pledge

We are also part of the Microsoft Partner Pledge, an initiative with which we are involved in promoting sustainability, as well as diversity or responsible and ethical AI, among other issues: this Partner Pledge is a commitment of the company’s partners who believe that technology improves people’s lives and gives them better opportunities.

Recently, we participated in a reforestation activity in the Jarama river basin in San Sebastián de los Reyes (Madrid). Together with Microsoft volunteers and other members of the Partner Pledge, some of our team members planted ash, poplar, and willow trees. This contributes to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and protecting the ecosystem in the fight against climate change.

Collaboration with enerTIC

One of our latest actions has been in collaboration with enerTIC, a platform that brings together companies and institutions seeking a more competitive and sustainable economy. In its XI Smart Energy Reference Guide, our CEO, Quique Martínez Alén, talks about digital twins and their importance in business during 2023. The guide is completed with, among other topics, technological projects aimed at improving energy efficiency and sustainability, trends, and analysis for the coming months, and use cases.

Projects to Contribute to Sustainability in Other Companies

Our commitment and experience in the development of cutting-edge technological projects also help our clients to build more sustainable environments. Some of our success stories show how we have achieved this.

For example, for Grupo ASISA we migrated 3 terabytes of databases from a physical server to Azure. This saved resources and optimized work by more than 50%. This is a sign that cloud computing serves to consume less energy and thereby curb the climate emergency. There are also significant cost savings that contribute to economic sustainability.

To reduce paper consumption, Trasmediterranea developed an eco-friendly, contactless boarding system that has saved more than 2.5 million boarding passes.

In its quest to care for the environment through a smart living environment, Heijmans turns every project into a digital twin, equipping it with sensors and using the information obtained to improve the customer experience in terms of comfort, convenience, safety, and efficiency. In order to handle all the data from these digital twins, we have built a robust and secure cloud architecture to process data from IVRIs and other devices using different processing branches.

In order not to damage the natural landscape, we also created the Viawind viewer, based on our Evergine industrial graphics engine. Through photographs and mathematical calculations, you can create realistic simulations of the wind turbines of an offshore wind farm, and check the visual impact and how it would adapt to the environment. This improves the team’s decision-making while ensuring compliance with legislation. An example of the use of Viawind can be seen at the Parc Tramuntana wind farm.

Thanks to Viawind we reached an agreement with BlueFloat Energy, specialized in the development of offshore wind energy projects around the world, to test the feasibility of wind farms in countries such as Australia, Spain, and Italy.

These are not the only examples of how technology is building a more sustainable world in many areas. Through blockchain, big data, or machine learning we can help you build tools for monitoring, analysis, and transparency of your actions; with them, you will decide how to neutralize carbon emissions or improve other aspects of economic, social, and environmental impact.

For example, IoT sensors collect energy consumption and aggregate this data into a blockchain, which after analysis allows you to know the impact of the carbon footprint. The Microsoft Emissions Impact Dashboard tool, which monitors, analyzes, and reduces carbon emissions, is also useful in this regard. This reduces the energy costs of processes and complies with sustainability legislation.

On the other hand, with artificial intelligence tools, we have helped an airport management company to analyze data on passenger arrivals and departures, humidity, and temperature. With this information, it has optimized energy consumption, both from an environmental and economic point of view: it reduced air conditioning costs and improved air conditioning management in the spaces.

Among other purposes, we at Plain Concepts are here to help you become more sustainable with technologies. In the meantime, we will continue to do our bit internally, in order to leave a better world for the next generations – we look forward to working with you!