Responsibility and the environment

KK-Palokonsultti Oy aims to provide high-quality, safe and environmentally friendly fire safety solutions, that are efficient and economical for the user. Our goal is to build long-term, trusting customer relationships based on customer satisfaction and the quality of our services. 

KK-Palokonsultti Oy provides expert services in the field of fire engineering design and protection of buildings, structures and infrastructure. We are committed to fulfilling our promises to our customers and our obligations to our business.

Our quality and environmental policy

We are committed to responsible business practices and to delivering long-term economic, social and societal value to all our stakeholders.

We take environmental considerations into account in all our activities, thus assuming our responsibility to protect our shared environment and nature for future generations. We believe that sustainability is the greatest innovation opportunity of our lifetime.

In order to achieve the performance standards we set for our own operations, we operate a certified business management systems in accordance with ISO 9001 and 14001 standards In line with the principles of continuous improvement, we are committed to the continuous improvement of our business systems.

The objectives of our design work

Our design projects aim to provide a high quality fire safety engineering, that achieves all the potential benefits of good design. Our design work is based on the principles of absolute fire safety, cost reduction, environmental conservation and reducing the carbon footprint of the building.

Building materials make a significant contribution to a building’s carbon footprint and their relative importance increases as buildings become more energy efficient. The majority of emissions from building materials and products are generated during the manufacturing phase.

In terms of environmental protection, we therefore give priority to solutions that make it possible to reduce the use of materials and energy consumption during use. In this way, we contribute to the carbon footprint of a building throughout its life cycle.

Measures of our design work

We are continuously developing and refining the practices that support our objectives. We look carefully at each assignment and identify areas of the project where we can reduce the amount of labour and construction materials without compromising safety. In our design work, we favour site-specific performance-based fire safety design, which can achieve significant cost savings when implemented at an early design stage.

Performance-based fire safety design has, for example, enabled a significant reduction in the amount of steel used in load-bearing structures and the amount of fire protective painting used for fire protection in steel structures. Reducing the use of toxic paints and chemicals also limits the negative environmental impact of a potential fire.

We also aim to create new innovative design solutions that can be adopted by other fire engineers. In this way, we are playing our part in shaping the future of construction.

Our objectives in our own activities

In our own activities, we aim to achieve appropriate environmental management in relation to the nature, scale and environmental impact of our activities, products and services.

Our corporate environmental objective is carbon neutrality. Although the carbon footprint of new buildings is not yet commonly assessed, we believe that the savings we achieve through good design in construction projects already fully offset our own carbon footprint.

Measures in our own operations

As a design firm doing brainwork, our own carbon footprint and impact on the environment is already relatively small. We do not have our own production or distribution of products, so there are no logistical material flows. There is very little use of chemicals in our operations. The chemicals we use are mainly related to cleaning. We recycle our waste into sorting and collection systems provided by the property management company.

The heat consumption of our premises is optimised according to the occupancy rate. We favour renewable energy. Our computing intensive simulations consuming a lot of electricity and therefore we use, as an additional capacity, a environmentally friendly cloud service platform which uses the waste heat generated during the calculation to heat the properties. The heat is carbon neutral, because it is generated as a by-product of energy that has already been used once.

We favour remote working, which has been made available to all who want it. This will reduce unnecessary travel. Our office location is also designed to make it easy for people to get to work and keep distances as short as possible. We also take into account the consumption and emissions of our own vehicles. All the cars we use are low-emission, and as our fleet is upgraded we will move to full electric vehicles.

KK-Palokonsultti Ltd as an employer

As a specialist organisation, our success is based on the skills of our staff and their enjoyment of their work. We strive to be a responsible, open and reliable employer. Our aim is to make work more enjoyable for our employees.

We also make sure that our staff are competent and well-trained for a variety of firefighting tasks. Continuous learning and development, both at individual and organisational level, is therefore of paramount importance to us, and this is also something we want to invest in and commit ourselves to.

ISO 14001 environmental certification

ISO 14001 is the main international standard in the set of ISO 14000 environmental management standards. It is widely used as the basis for environmental management. The first version was published in 1996 and has grown to become the second most popular management system in the world, just behind the set of ISO 9000 international standards.

ISO 14001 contains the basic elements of an environmental management system. It can be applied to any organisation in both the public and private sectors. A responsible environmental management system achieves a number of business benefits, such as improving cost-effectiveness and promoting environmental awareness among staff.

The standard requires an organisation to define its environmental goals and objectives, and the management system to achieve them. The main requirements of the standard include environmental policy, planning, system implementation and operations, audits and corrective actions, and management review. The standard requires that the organisation commits to the requirements in its processes, procedures and activities. ISO 14001 certificates are issued by accredited certification bodies.

For more information, see the ISO 14000 series of standards for environmental management (SFS).