A raft of environmentally friendly measures helped to attract Procter & Gamble to Gazeley's G-Park at Amiens in northern France.

At the end of 2005, Procter & Gamble occupied two Gazeley buildings (totalling 75,000 sq m, 807,000 sq ft) which offered cutting-edge green technology: timber frames that reduce the embodied CO2, extensive insulation to prevent heat loss and special lighting installed that allows greater coverage with less power usage.

In the offices, recycled materials were used extensively. Grey-water recycling systems allow rainwater collected from the roofs to be used in the washrooms and a range of low water use sanitary fittings were installed.

The buildings were Gazeley's first in France to feature energy generating solar photovoltaic panels, and plans for the installation of a wind turbine are now close to fruition.

Marie-Laure Loos, Gazeley's sustainability manager for France, says that Procter & Gamble is well satisfied with the buildings, which were completed in January 2007. However, Gazeley's role in the project did not cease with the handover of the buildings.

Although the buildings have been designed and constructed to perform efficiently regardless of on-site management, an engineer was tasked by Gazeley to help our customer use the building in the most energy efficient way - and also to map the amount of energy and water saved by the environmental initiatives.

"We estimated energy and water savings for the warehouses at design stage, now we want to measure what was actually saved. This will enable us to take the learning forward to future projects," says Loos.