How Hartelt uses data to drive sustainability in Healthcare Real Estate

As a forward-thinking real estate investor, Hartelt focuses explicitly on socially relevant real estate, specializing entirely in the healthcare sector. Within this segment, future-proof and affordable housing is crucial not just for investors, but especially for healthcare professionals and vulnerable clients.

Thijs van Eijs, Manager Asset Management & ESG at Hartelt is the driving force beihind the sustainability strategy at the organisation. His mission is clear: to take the burden of real estate management off healthcare providers, enabling them to focus on what matters most: delivering quality care. To achieve this while meeting increasingly stricter regulations and ESG requirements, Thijs has adopted a data driven approach.

The challenge: manual processes and limited control

For years, Hartelt relied on tenants to manually provide energy consumption data. The process was time consuming and often resulted in data that was incomplete, delayed or unreliable. As a result, gaining control over energy performance and identifying opportunities for improvement was challenging.

As an asset manager on behalf of institutional investors and pension funds, Hartelt is required to deliver detailed and reliable sustainability reporting. The company has participated in the global GRESB-benchmark since 2017 (where they now rank in the top 3 in Europe within the healthcare segment).Without conclusive consumption figures from tenants, completing these ESG reports is a virtually impossible task. 

Additionally, the lack of real-time insights made it impossible to proactively manage energy consumption across the portfolio or quickly identify major energy users. One example is a pathology laboratory within the portfolio that consumes approximately 2 million kWh of electricity annually.

"Previously, we had to hope that tenants wanted to share their data with us. Now, we have real-time insight into the entire portfolio."

— Thijs van Eijs, Manager Asset Management & ESG at Hartelt

The solution: real-time insights and automation

Together with Healthy Workers, Hartelt transitioned to automated, real-time building monitoring. By connecting directly to the smart meters across the entire portfolio, Healthy Workers enabled continuous monitoring of every building via a centralized platform.

As a result, Hartelt now benefits from:

• Reliable real-time data: Incomplete estimates are a thing of the past. With direct access to real time meter data, Hartelt now has reliable consumption insights that enable proactive energy management.
• Audit-ready reporting: Due to reporting obligations toward investors and regulators, maintaining a complete audit trail is essential. Figures can now be exported instantly. 
• Targeted Night Monitoring: Detailed insight into evening, night and weekend consumption makes it easy to identify unnecessary energy waste and uncover savings opportunities.
• Greater operational efficiency: The daily workload for property managers has been significantly reduced. Anomalies are detected automatically, allowing maintenance partners and installers to respond faster and more effectively.

More than software

For Hartelt, the value extends beyond the platform itself. According to Thijs, what sets Healthy Workers apart is its pragmatic and proactive approach. Rather than simply providing data, the team actively supports the next steps, from identifying improvement opportunities to advising on tenant communication and building optimisation.

“Healthy Workers goes beyond the software. Their proactive approach and willingness to think along with us is what really makes the difference.”

— Thijs van Eijs, Manager Asset Management & ESG

Ready for BACS and the next step

Thijs does not see new regulations such as BACS as a compliance burden, as an obligation, but rather as a logical step toward smarter and more sustainable real estate management. Especially in healthcare real estate, monitoring energy performance and indoor climate conditions is becoming increasingly important.

As a result, Hartelt is already looking beyond energy data alone. The next step is to integrate building management systems (BMS) and expand into indoor climate monitoring through Healthy Workers’ Full Service solution.

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