This paper aims to identify key performance indicators (KPI), and their corresponding
attributes, required to successfully manage asset management sustainably in a built environment
context. Improving the sustainability of existing housing stock is a major challenge facing the UK social
housing sector. There is a lack of support to navigate the growing and often incongruent information
relating to sustainable development and how to operationalise it. The problem is twofold; firstly, the
current (single criterion) condition-based approach to maintenance planning constrains Asset
Managers and does not fully address the social, environmental and economic aspects of sustainability.
Secondly, the toolkits available for assessing the sustainability of housing are often generic and are
time consuming and expensive to implement. This paper reports the findings of a participatory
research project with a leading London based housing association, using a series of landlord and
tenant workshops to derive a set of attributes associated with key performance indicators (KPIs) to
fully reflect the local requirements of the landlord and their interpretation of the sustainability
agenda. Five KPIs considered to be measurable, directly affected by maintenance work and
independent of each other were identified by this landlord (comfort, running costs, adaptability,
maintenance costs and community).The resulting outputs, in a policy context, will provide a clear
route-map to social housing landlords of how to improve the sustainability of their housing stock with
the additional benefits of addressing fuel poverty, carbon emissions targets whilst at the same time
help create and maintain housing in which people want to live. The proposed approach is flexible
enough to incorporate the individual requirements of landlords, be able to adapt to changes in
government policy (local and central) in a timely, robust, transparent and inclusive format
