Colliers International UK plc is part of Colliers International, now the world's third largest commercial real estate organisation with 512 offices in 61 countries.

Our business is property and the built environment. Some of our clients occupy property as tenants, for example in High Street stores accross the country; others own property as an investment, for example by pension funds. We work with others on developing their ideas for new properties. We deal with everthing from a shop to the distribution hubs of leading supermarkets; from a care home to the NHS estate; from a garage to vast manufacturing plants; from small office suites to iconic buildings in our major cities.

In the UK we employ over 700 people in 13 main offices and we understand how important in-depth local knowledge is to our clients. However, being an integral part of the newly aligned Colliers International also gives our clients access to over 12,500 professionals around the world and allows us to share comprehensive market knowledge.

We have some great people working for us. To find out more about the type of things they do, visit our website: www.colliers.com/markets/UK

Colliers International and the Environment

Colliers Green Focus has much in common with our core business at Colliers International UK plc.

At one level, we've been successful because the advice we give to clients is all about local insight and putting things into practice. Our thinking when creating Colliers Green Focus was to combine our interest as a responsible company in supporting educational projects, with something that would encourage young people to develop their own insight (with help from a geographer and photographer) and in a practical way (through the use of digital photography).

On another level, we've been working with clients on environment issues for some years now, helping them with energy efficiency, waste management and tracking carbon emissions. You can read about what our sustainability team get up to and the type of projects they help deliver at http://www.colliers.com/AboutUs/Sustainability so focussing our community programme onto issues around sustainability and the built environment was a natural step for us. It is one that has opened our eyes too, looking at the photographs taken on field-trips and listening to some of the ideas aired in the workshops.

We take our own environmental responsibilities seriously as well. We've been certified to ISO14001, the leading international standard for environmental management, since 2005. And last year we became a founding partner of 10:10, the campaign whose members committed to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% during 2010. We're pleased to be able to report that for the 12 month period to September 2010, we reduced our carbon emissions by 12% (based on absoulte energy use in buildings we occupy).

We've taken the initiative on the wider agenda too. We were a founding member of the UK Green Building Council, set up in 2007 with a mission to dramatically improve the sustainability of the built environment. And in 2010, we joined the Westminster Sustainability Business Forum, a select group of companies who work with Parliament and Government Agencies on how to overcome challenges and maximise opportunities in the transition to a low carbon economy.

Across our company, from the directors to our surveyors around the country, we are proud of what Colliers Green Focus has been achieving. We're not the only ones; many of the great and good of our industry have voiced similar thoughts at the Awards Ceremonies for Colliers Green Focus.