Correct and conquer: Updates to the GRESB Assessment Correction service | The Pulse by GRESB

In this episode of The Pulse by GRESB, we bring you an insightful conversation about the Assessment Correction service, available during the first two weeks of September. Tune in to learn about best practices for making corrections to your submitted GRESB assessment and hear about key topics, including pricing updates, different types of assessment corrections, and much more. Watch the episode below, featuring:

Can’t listen? Read the full transcript below. Please note that edits have been made for readability.

Tyler: Welcome to The Pulse by GRESB, our interview series where we discuss important topics on sustainable real assets. Today, I’m your host, Tyler Guthrie, and I’m here talking about the Assessment Correction service. And who better to dive into the details than Kevin Kirby, Director of Member Success at GRESB.

Kevin: Hey, Tyler. Yeah, happy to be here. I’ve been at the organization for a little over five years now and excited to walk through some of the process changes, pricing changes, everything related to the Assessment Correction today.

Tyler: Fantastic. Well, let’s dive right in. This year, GRESB introduced the Assessment Correction. It’s a renamed service that used to be called the Review Period Request. Can you tell us a little bit about this change?

Kevin: Yeah, absolutely. So in 2023, there was not yet really a clear distinction between what we call the review period and actually making a review period request. So what we thought would make it more clear is that the review period will continue to exist. It’s essentially the preliminary results review period, but the service to actually make a correction to your assessment is now called the Assessment Correction service.

So the Assessment Correction is really not a change in the actual service that we’re providing, but it’s more about making sure that there’s clarity and a distinction between making an assessment correction during the preliminary results review period.

Tyler: That is clear, that makes a lot of sense. And can you tell us a little bit about what is the purpose of the Assessment Correction service?

Kevin: Essentially once you have been able to review your preliminary results that we launched on September 1st and you may realize that something was missing or inadvertently excluded from your assessment, you can actually use the Assessment Correction service to make that assessment correction. So a few examples of corrections you could be making, let’s say that some of the documentation requirements for validation were misunderstood. This may have resulted in a partially accepted or not accepted validation decision. And what you’re able to do is supplement your evidence so that you can meet the validation requirements. Another thing may be that your output in the benchmark report does not meet expectations based on your input. And you, of course, can change the input, make a correction to your input so that the output and the results do reflect what you’ve done from an ESG data perspective or ESG performance perspective.

What happens often is maybe data is inadvertently left out during the reporting period. And after reviewing the preliminary results that we’re showing to you, this is made clear that something was missing and you have the ability to add that into your assessment. So, essentially the ultimate outcome of this service is trying to make sure that there’s higher data quality for you and your investors, and that can be done by using the Assessment Correction service.

Tyler: I see. And how would a participant actually know that they needed to make a correction, other than seeing that a result was partially accepted or not accepted?

Kevin: So, you know, within your ESG report, you understand that you have 80% building certification coverage, but when looking at your GRESB results, you’re seeing something like 50% certification coverage. So obviously that’s a gap and what a participant should do is try to understand if that’s a true gap, and maybe reporting periods are different. Or maybe a building certification was accidentally forgotten to be reported during the GRESB reporting period. So there’s a lot of ways to kind of assess gaps or understand if the outcome in the benchmark report is not what you expected. And comparing that to your own data that you have to make sure that, of course, what you want is within the GRESB reporting and within your GRESB benchmark report. That to reflect your ESG data from the specific reporting year.

Tyler: I see, okay, so when people are taking a look at their preliminary results, look at that carefully, try to understand if something is missing, reach out.

Kevin: Yeah. Absolutely.

Tyler: Alright, so what changes have been made to the service which we now call the Assessment Correction?

Kevin: So, we kind of can group the changes into three main buckets, and all of these changes have stemmed directly from participant feedback that we’ve been collecting since we launched this service probably four or five years ago now. So the first one that we’re most excited to announce is around pricing. So for pricing for 2024 Assessment Correction, we’ve actually reduced the base fee for making the assessment correction. So for example, we’ve reduced the fee by 1,500 euros. So that means for only 3,500 euros, you can make a change to your assessment. This change can be adding a building certification.

It can be adding missing energy data. It can be selecting an additional issue for a policy. Let’s say you forgot to include your net zero policy and you can add that in. So, if it is a non-validated edit, meaning, performance data, just selecting an additional issue, that is something where that would be charged at a reduced fee of 3,500 euros. However, if the edit does require validation, such as adding documentation that is part of our manual validation process, let’s say for one of the policy based indicators or a new ESG report, that would be at the same fee that we charged in 2023. So that would be 5,000 euros. Essentially what we’ve done: reduced fee for non-validated edits, and we’ve kept the same fee for validated edits. We’ll of course have a list of the validated indicators, that’s also in the validation appendix of the reference guide. But we have to keep that fee the same for validated edits as we incur third party validation costs from our third party validation team.

Tyler: And, real quick, just to interject, what happens if the change is a result of an error on the GRESB side?

Kevin: So this is actually one of the other changes of the process we have for the assessment correction. So, in years past, if a participant believed that GRESB had made an error in a validation decision, we did require the participant to fill out a review period request, as we called it, and we called it basically a validation challenge pathway. So the participant challenged the validation outcome. Therefore, GRESB would look into the validation decision. If GRESB made the mistake, of course we would not invoice the participant. But if the participant just asked us to review the validation decision and there was no change in the outcome, that would still have been invoiced in the past. What we realized was in practice, that was a bit difficult. And it’s also something where we want participants to fix their documentation to lead to a positive validation outcome, meaning having an accepted status. So we’ve actually removed the fee entirely this year for these validation challenges. So if a participant has any validation questions, they may think GRESB had made an error.

In 99.56% of the validation decisions, there are not really any GRESB errors at all. So what we do is we look into the decision, we review the decision in the validation portal, and at that time, it’s very clear if GRESB has made a mistake from our side, and we would communicate that, yes, a mistake has been made, and we would change the validation outcome kind of on the spot. Or, of course, what we want to do is educate you as the customer on how to lead to a positive validation outcome. Maybe it’s uploading an additional document to support a couple more issues. Maybe this is adding a 2023 policy as compared to the 2024 policy that was added. And of course, 2024 policies are not considered valid. So yeah, in general, what we’re trying to do is make sure that if you have validation questions, we answer them and we allow you to have a successful assessment correction by fixing what the error may have been from your side.

Tyler: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. So that’s two buckets, what’s the third?

Kevin: So the third is around process changes. And what we’re trying to do here is front load customer support to lead to a successful Assessment Correction process. So basically, last year participants would log into the GRESB portal, directly request the Assessment Correction service in the portal, and you would immediately receive a Type Form. Sometimes when that Type Form was submitted to the GRESB team it was half baked, maybe not containing all the information we needed to assist you through the process. Oftentimes that information would change after directly engaging with our team. So what we’re doing this year is basically, trying to handhold you through the process. The Member Success team is basically on call by emailing [email protected]. We will explain exactly what you need to do in terms of adding additional documentation, if that may be the case for a validation decision you want to fix. Maybe exactly how to add the building certification and re-aggregate your data. Essentially, we want to handhold you through the process. We have a much bigger team this year to assist with this, and we ultimately want to lead to a successful assessment correction period for you.

Tyler: That’s really nice to hear and it’s definitely a different world this year than it was in past years. That’s great. So can you tell me a little bit about what type of assessment corrections can participants make and what types they cannot make?

Kevin: In terms of edits and corrections that participants can make, it’s really kind of two boxes. So one box is, of course, around validation. Let’s say you have a not accepted validation status or partially accepted validation status. The Member Success team will tell you exactly what is missing from the evidence. And basically say, okay, if you’re missing one of these requirements, for example, the Assurance and Verification Statement can’t be found, so please add the relevant Verification and Assurance Statement. Oftentimes maybe participants over selected issues, meaning from a policy perspective, they selected 12 environmental issues, but the evidence actually only reflected six of these issues. Sometimes the participant maybe has evidence to support the additional six issues that were not found. Or, what you also have the option to do is de-select the six issues that were not found by the validation team, and that would lead to an accepted status. That’s kind of a place where the Member Success team is best placed to advise on how to go about the fix. Because, yeah, it’s maybe supplementing documentation to get to an accepted status, or, it’s changing the indicator response so that the documentation directly aligns with the response, meaning, it would have an accepted status. Of course, what you can be doing is looking at indicator responses, open text boxes, and bolstering those or adding performance data that was inputted incorrectly.

So, for example, a missing building certification or energy data that was just not found during the reporting process or it wasn’t accessible. But what is very clear that participants cannot do is supplement energy data or any performance data that was found after July 1st. So July 1st is of course the submission deadline and that’s basically the cutoff point for all data that exists in the GRESB database. So, to kind of explain this in an example, let’s say a participant submits on July 1st and then on July 31st, the participant uncovers additional energy data that they forgot to include. So this is an example of data that cannot be added to the assessment because it was found or achieved after the submission deadline. However, if that data was present in systems in April or May, and that was just kind of inadvertently left out, that is something that you can absolutely add during the Assessment Correction process.

Tyler: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. Okay, we are nearly at the end of the time, but can you give me a general overview of what the process is to request the Assessment Correction, and when can members actually take advantage of this, and when is the window closed?

Kevin: Yeah. So this is the first two weeks of September. So we launch preliminary results on September 1st. The participants and partners log in to review those results. And any questions you have on the results or validation outcomes, you can of course start the process by emailing [email protected] which is our Member Success team. And the Member Success team will essentially walk you through the process from there. Once you, as a participant or partner, have decided that you do want to make an assessment correction to correct data that was inadvertently left out or to add a document that the Member Success team has said, this is what you need to do to result in an accepted decision. The Member Success team will send you a Type Form. The Type Form is used to capture all of the information that you will be changing in the assessment. It also captures your bill to information for later invoicing. You submit the Type Form. The GRESB Member Success team will de-submit your assessment response so that you can make the edits that the Member Success team has recommended. We typically ask that those edits are made within just a few business days, depending on exactly when during those first two weeks you submit the Type Form. That changes how quick you have to make a turnaround with resubmitting. Once the assessments are resubmitted within the first two weeks of the month, then GRESB, of course, revalidates, rescores, rebenchmarks, and then we launch final results on October 1st.

Tyler: Well, thanks so much for giving us that overview, Kevin. I really appreciate it, and thanks for everyone listening, and if you have questions, reach out to [email protected].