The climate change challenge

There is now wide agreement that the emission of greenhouse gases by man is raising Earth’s temperature to the point where massive and widespread damage to its flora and fauna is inevitable. What should project management’s position be on this alarming situation? And how does this square with APM’s new Chartered status? These are questions that I explore in a new APM publication.[1]

First, we need to approach the challenge with more vigour and discipline – something more robust than just sustainability, which lacks the focus and urgency needed. This has become apparent through the work sponsored by the UN over the past 10–15 years, culminating in the 2015 UN meeting in Paris, at which 197 ‘Parties to the Agreement’ pledged to take actions to hold the rise in the world’s temperature to 2°C, or less, above pre-industrial levels, with the ultimate aim of making that rise 1.5°C. (This will require moving to a position of negative emissions.)

Failure to achieve these targets will unquestionably lead to flooding, loss of habitat, substantial migration and demographic change, and widespread disruption to our way of life.

Implementation of the Paris Agreement is not as strong as the threat warrants. Responsibility is decentralised to the parties, who are required to develop their own plans and report periodically to the UN.

Why isn’t there a more directed response with a single point of accountability, supported by a programme management office, either for the programme as a whole or at national or regional levels? Some say that this would prove impractical. But I would argue that, if it were war and our survival was so obviously threatened, we wouldn’t give up so easily. Well, in effect, it is war.

The report looks at the impact project management is having on reducing emissions. There are many ‘business as usual’ and ‘transformation’ mitigation projects where project and programme management have important and successful roles.

They are also central to the two large R&D programmes bearing on climate change: nuclear fusion and carbon capture and storage. Unfortunately, the track record for these big programmes is not good. The profession has a long way to go before we can say it has a reliable contribution to make. In fact, the trend is away from these large new technologies towards smaller-scale photovoltaic and wind projects.

This said, the UK government has decided that nuclear fission, financed by the private sector, should provide the country’s baseload of electrical power. Unfortunately, nuclear is an incredibly difficult and expensive technology to build. Hence, we have ended up with Hinkley Point C (HPC), with its likelihood of cost and schedule overruns, procured with an old-fashioned disregard for risk sharing.

The prospect of contractual claims looms large – a view recently echoed by the National Audit Office. To add insult to indignity, the next plant scheduled to follow HPC was to be built by Hitachi, only its nuclear arm, the old Westinghouse, has just gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following huge losses on its US projects. All in all, we have to conclude that our project management competence is not supporting adequately the UK’s ability to meet its emission targets.

Another important area is portfolio management – for example, in dealing with potential flooding and in producing integrated infrastructure. The difficulty, particularly in producing integrated infrastructure, is not so much in the technique as in decision-making, and ultimately the lack of environmental stewardship: there is no overall sponsor.

The role of the sponsor is key – for example, in aligning strategies, setting behaviours and making decisions. But in reality, there is, at government level, neither a ‘single point’ sponsor nor an integrated strategy for dealing with carbon emissions.

So, what should the profession’s response to climate change be? Among the several characteristics of professionalism, three stand out: ownership of a distinct body of knowledge, competence and ethical behaviour. On the first, we need to do better.

The fact that so many big, complex projects overrun indicates we must improve our reliability. But it is the ethical dimension that poses the biggest challenge: as professionals we should be advising on what is good for society and behaving accordingly. Too many of us are not.

Peter Morris is professor emeritus of construction and project management at University College London, and vice-president of APM

[1] Climate Change and What the Project Management Profession Should Be Doing About It: A UK perspective (due to be published in late September 2017)