Five Star Real Estate Operations Audit

Introducing our Five-Star Real Estate Operations Audit, an exciting step forward in safety for facilities management. Five Star Real Estate Operations Audit is a version of our existing Five Star Occupational Health and Safety Audit. It is a sector-specific audit tailored to the health and safety risks most relevant to Real Estate and Facilities Management operations. 

The audit specification model includes five best practice indicators which are continually assessed throughout the audit process:

• Leadership
• Stakeholder participation
• Risk management
• Organisational health and safety culture
• Continual improvement

We have launched our 2026 specification. If you would like a copy, please complete the form to request a call back, and a member of our team will be in touch as soon as possible.

Organisations responsible for managing occupied facilities that want independent assurance that their health and safety systems effectively protect employees, contractors, visitors and other building occupants.

It may be particularly relevant if your organisation:

• Manages one or more complex facilities or sites
• Has an in-house facilities management function
• Provides facilities management services to clients
• Uses contractors or outsourced service providers
• Has responsibility for the safety of employees, contractors, visitors or other building occupants
• Already has established health and safety arrangements and wants to understand how effectively they are being implemented
• Wants to benchmark performance against recognised health and safety best practice

• Go beyond compliance
  • The Five Star Audit is designed to evaluate how your health and safety arrangements compare with current best practice, rather than simply checking whether policies and procedures exist.
  • Based around the recognised Plan – Do – Check – Act principle, the audit provides a structured route towards continual improvement in occupational health and safety performance.
• Understand whether your systems work in practice
  • Strong policies are only effective when they translate into effective action.
  • During the audit, the auditor uses a combination of:
    • Health and safety documentation review
    • Interviews with management, employees and other relevant stakeholders
    • Site inspection including sampling of operational activities
  • This enables the audit to assess both the organisation's documented arrangements and how effectively they are applied at site.
• Assess real estate operations-specific risks
  • Facilities can present risks that may not be fully addressed through a generic health and safety assessment.
  • This audit has been developed to place additional focus on risks affecting building occupants and the effectiveness of the arrangements used to control them.
  • Audit delivery is conducted by seasoned industry auditors with extensive experience in safety for real estate and facilities management.

The Five Star Audit gives you more than an assessment of where you are today. It provides a structured view of your performance and practical guidance on where to improve.

Following completion of the audit, your organisation receives a comprehensive audit report.

Your report includes:

• Overall star grading: A quantified assessment of your organisation's performance against the Five Star Real Estate Operations Audit specification.
• Executive summary: A high-level overview of your health and safety performance, including graphical performance indicators.
• Sectional performance: Understand how your organisation performs across Plan, Do, Check and Act.
• Best Practice Indicator performance: See how your organisation performs across leadership, stakeholder participation, risk management, organisational health and safety culture, and continual improvement.
• Identified strengths and observations: Understand where existing health and safety arrangements are working effectively and where opportunities exist to strengthen them.
• Recommendations for improvement: Receive recommendations against areas where improvement is required to help your organisation progress towards best practice.
• Prioritised actions: Recommendations are categorised to help your organisation understand which areas require greater attention.
• Action planning tables: Use structured action-planning tables to assign responsibilities, plan improvements and track progress following the audit.
• Sword of Honour Eligibility: Successful achievement of 5-stars in this audit makes your site eligible for our prestigious Sword of Honour award.

Our audit and consultancy services are internationally recognised and are the best way to ensure your health, safety and environmental management systems (and associated arrangements) are suitable for your business requirements, promote continual improvement and are effectively implemented.

As part of our own quality control processes, we ensure:

• Our audit and consultancy products are regularly reviewed to meet customer needs, expectations and sector best practice
• Consistently high standards of service are achieved through a robust quality assurance process including auditor standardisation, training and performance monitoring
• Our technical specialists serve on strategic committees for occupational health, safety and environmental standards
• We have a unique internationally recognised best practice (five star) audit process
• Industry recognition from awards such as the prestigious Sword or Globe of Honour