Special Report: Climate emergency

In 2016, APM posed a tricky question: “How can a time-bound activity such as a project – which is by definition ‘temporary’ and ‘unique’ – be reconciled with sustainability objectives which are typically set in an unspecified but remote future?” Three years later, sustainability is top of national and global agendas, but this question remains difficult to answer.

One challenge is that sustainability is not just about a project’s CO2 emissions or landfill waste. Researchers at Utrecht’s University of Applied Sciences have defined sustainable project management as “project-organised change in policies, assets or organisations, with consideration of the economic, social and environmental impact of the project, its result and its effect, for now and future generations”.

Another challenge for project managers is that they are generally employees or contractors. “They’re required to take a client brief and execute it to the best of their ability, but it’s often not clear what that employer or client expects in terms of sustainability,” says Tom Taylor, former APM president and visiting professor at the University of Salford. “Is it specifically mentioned in the brief? Is it framed as a cost-in-use? Are they asking for metrics around carbon footprint? What about the implications of decommissioning? Getting those factors into briefs would be a major step forward.”

Strategy isn’t enough

This need to be more strategic and more practical about sustainability is reflected in some of the proprietary methodologies designed to help. The GPM Global network, for example, established its Projects Integrating Sustainable Methods (PRiSM) approach nearly a decade ago to help projects align to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

“Our approach is called P5. It’s a matrix that project managers can use to make that kind of wider assessment,” says Antony della Porta, executive adviser to the network in the UK and founder of the Sustainable PM initiative. “To people, planet and profit [the traditional ‘triple bottom line’], we add programmes and projects – making a specific link between what we do as project managers and those outcomes. It covers environmental and social elements, as well as profitability, economics and capital deployment, all of which are necessary if you’re going to be truly sustainable.”

It’s about treating projects more holistically to get a complete picture of their environmental and social impact. “Project managers need to think of themselves as people who do more than just cope with the post-sanctioned stages of a project,” says Rob Leslie-Carter, a director at Arup and a former APM Project Manager of the Year. “We should be acting as advisers to clients at a strategic level, influencing the purpose of the project and the deliverables – all with an eye to sustainability.”

Living the BREEAM

At the top level, then, project managers can seek out projects that will contribute to meaningful change, and help define projects by their sustainability if they’re in at the very start. “Some clients are already pushing more aggressive stipulations on environmental standards – beyond, for example, the BREEAM [Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method] benchmarks,” says Taylor.

Industry-wide criteria such as BREEAM make it easier to nudge clients if they’re not already thinking about sustainability. Simply considering the checklist forces stakeholders to make conscious decisions about sustainability, but it must be part of the design stage. “It’s much harder to retrofit that kind of thinking once a project kicks off,” Taylor adds.

So, how we manage projects is almost as important as what we manage. A wind farm clearly contributes to a sustainable world, but if the project manager uses helicopters to survey the site or just mindlessly prints out paperwork, that’s a problem. “You can’t just put your sustainability protocols up on a website and assume the work is done,” says della Porta. “If day-to-day decisions aren’t being shaped by their impact on those criteria, it’s just lip service.”

Baking in sustainability

“Project managers should constantly think about sustainable approaches to execution – on procurement, for example, using local suppliers or recycled materials,” says Leslie-Carter. “Then performance targets and reporting are a factor. Baking in sustainability requirements to project KPIs will help hugely when client resourcing inevitably shifts later in the project. The project management team can be policing those areas, asking the questions about whether the methods of delivering the project are still securing, say, the planned whole-life costs.”

He also suggests using smarter project management technology, which can help both at the strategic planning level and when making sure sustainability KPIs are visible in dashboards, reports and team communications.

Individual project managers can make a difference. “Project management is, by definition, a process of change,” della Porta says. “Every time we change anything, we have an opportunity to look at what that means to the triple bottom line elements – and not just apply the traditional iron triangle, which can lead to us running projects for their own sake.” Every project is an inflection point and the project managers guiding it have an opportunity to set a part of the world on a new, more sustainable course.

Formal professional responses are also coalescing. “We’re seeing more bodies align around the climate emergency,” says Leslie-Carter. “The Royal Institute of British Architects formally agreed to join the global declaration of a climate emergency in June, and there is a host of ‘engineers declare’ sites.” Project managers are getting in on the act, too. In November, Leslie-Carter confirmed that #projectmanagersdeclare will soon be launching. “We hope that every organisation managing projects or teaching project managers will join us in making this commitment,” he says.

The APM Body of Knowledge 7th edition supports this, spelling out that project managers have a responsibility to ensure that their work minimises environmental damage or positively affects ongoing sustainability. Like Taylor, Leslie-Carter thinks the profession can go further. “There has to be a commitment – upskilling and supporting project managers, developing a code of practice for sustainability, looking at how project managers can influence the wider adoption of more sustainable ways of life.”

A critical question

If projects are designed around long-term planning and we’re considering whole-life costs from inception, additional costs can be justified. Slower replacement rates, reduced maintenance and lower environmental costs should all be part of the decision-making process ahead of both the scoping of a project and the tools and techniques used to deliver it.

The conscious and practical application of these core tenets of sustainability is now a critical question for every project manager.

Author: Richard Young

Frame, plan, adapt, measure

Ramboll’s Bruce Wulff is working with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) to upgrade its facilities. Given that BAS is a research-driven organisation and is committed to environmental stewardship, sustainability is a key priority.

“There are more than 60 separate task orders within the programme, so, to ensure a consistent approach to sustainability, a programme-wide steering group was established,” Wulff says. “It includes the client and all stakeholder groups, and sets an overall strategy. It means we can build a sustainability management plan [SMP] for each project, based on the relevant parts of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.”

Some project measures are obvious: upgraded buildings are designed around careful analysis of usage patterns and suitability of on-site renewable energy technology, for example. But, even in the Antarctic, looking at local sourcing is a key sustainability win.

“We are building a new wharf capable of berthing the new, larger research vessel, the Sir David Attenborough,” says Wulff. “We needed massive rock-fill, but rather than ship it in, we opened up a small borrow-pit nearby. That not only slashed the carbon footprint for transport, it also minimised the risk of introducing invasive species.”

But Wulff stresses this in-the-field sustainability decision-making is empowered by a clear SMP, which must be bedded in from the start. It helps, he adds, to have a collegiate client in BAS, which endorsed a partnership approach right through each project’s supply chain.

That’s typified by the programme’s sustainability metrics, some of which are captured in KPIs for each project. At quarterly updates with the client and construction partners, these form a key part of the discussion.

A mission-oriented approach to sustainability projects

Professor Mariana Mazzucato, an economist and director at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, proposes a radical “mission-oriented approach” to sustainability projects. She is a co-originator, with economist Carlota Perez, of a ‘Green New Deal’.

This would involve “greening the entire economy”, transforming the renewable energy industry and every single aspect of manufacturing. Tax incentives and disincentives would be required to tackle high polluters and to encourage innovation in areas like waste and durability, as Mazzucato explained to Wired earlier this year.

In a 2018 paper on the Green New Deal, Mazzucato and Martha McPherson, head of green economy and sustainable growth at University College London, argued that: “To battle climate change, we can transform today’s fears of uncertain outcomes into a mission to be accomplished, as bold and inspirational as the 1969 moonshot. This will require visionary leadership, patient strategic finance, a grassroots movement and bottom-up innovation. It must be economy wide, and occur at all levels: local, regional, national and international, federal and city level. Only by having a wide stakeholder governance of green transitions can we enable growth that is both sustainable and inclusive.”

For project managers, turning sustainability into a mission to be accomplished, rather than a challenge to be feared, in a project could pivot a team towards a positive goal and embed a sustainability mindset, similar to how health and safety has become embedded.

To read more about Mazzucato’s ideas, visit bit.ly/32AsoNu and bit.ly/2q9BovV

Projecting the Future: Climate change, clean growth and sustainability

This is the second in a series of short papers by APM on the challenges shaping the profession’s future. The questions it poses to members are critical to the evolving professional response to sustainability. How would you respond to some of these?

How do you expect climate change to affect the profession over the next 10 years?
How might sustainability get more consideration in the way that projects are defined, designed, developed and delivered?
How can project professionals influence project sponsors, end users and project professionals to move sustainability up the agenda?

Share your views on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, or by emailing ptf@apm.org.uk. APM is particularly keen to hear about case studies of projects that put sustainable ideas into practice.

Download the latest Projecting the Future report at bit.ly/2X57xAT