SUSTAINABILITY
HOW CAN/DOES AN ORGANIZATION ENSURE ITS STRATEGY ON SUSTAINABILITY
S
ustainability – a very topical buzz-word these days. However, is it not much more than this, a buzz-word, more than just something that we ought to have on our organization’s profile? More and more public and private sector industry areas are making a point of publishing their “strategies” on sustainability and also their plans to address their industrial activities in the environment. Websites abound with subpages full of graphics and glowing words as to the areas of the environment within these industries that are being impacted with respect to their activities, and are to be addressed. However, and sadly, very little about actually acting these strategies in their projects.
Managing our environment is only one part of it all. Great to replant trees and so forth but as a responsible global society for our present and, more importantly, for our future, we need to do than “manage” it. We need to ensure that the sustainability of our environment in a multitude of areas becomes a reality not just a strategy.
The UN Global Compact’s Ten Principles for Sustainable Development, provides an important framework, and in partnership the Global Reporting Initiative Framework, (GRI G4), enables organizations of all types to start with a common point of publicly presenting their initiatives and status.
In conjunction with these are the ISO standards that also need to be addressed. Such as ISO 14001 The Environmental Management Standard, ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility and ISO 50001 The Energy Management, to name but three. ISO 9001 The Quality Management Standard also needs to be considered and ultimately adhered to. The UN’s Post 2015 Business Engagement Architecture opening paragraph defines the way forward from a business aspect as: “the main building blocks necessary to enhance corporate sustainability as an effective contribution to sustainable development, creating value for both business and society. Each of these building blocks must be further strengthened and connected through a comprehensive and collective effort if they are to help take corporate sustainability to scale and turn business into a truly transformative force in the Post-2015 era. Individual companies, corporate sustainability organizations, Governments, investors, business schools, civil society, labour and consumers all have a role to play in scaling up business action, and should be able to identify those areas in which they need to do more”
There will come a point when all areas of industry and all types will identify those areas as pointed out in the passage above and when this happens, will then, hopefully, start to put a strategy in place to address these areas and then, more hopefully, turn this strategy into something actionable and then be acted out. As more and more organizations take this direction, (as when
22 PUBLIC SECTOR ESTATES MANAGEMENT • MAY 2014
BECOMES A REALITY
organizations became ISO 9001 accredited and in order to maintain this accreditation limited their business partnerships to others with the same accreditation), these organizations are likely to restrict their partners to those who are showing that they are taking Sustainability and management of their environmental impact as seriously. So how will these organizations be able to identify others? An
obvious way is by being affiliated to, or member of, an association that is focused on Sustainability, such as a Centre of Excellence, or an enterprise with a membership structure that is dedicated to Sustainability. The GPM Sustainable Centre of Excellence in Project Management is a distinction for organizations that have committed to environmental, social and economic stewardship through the use of green and sustainable project management practices. Another question we need to ask ourselves is how are we, as individuals and organizations, going to ensure that the strategies now in place will be acted on (as noted earlier) and become part of the organization’s culture, ideology, and not just words on a website or annual report?
It is very evident that today business has to be organic and move with the changing world we live in, which is faster than ever before. In order to have some governance and control on that change we need to have some form of project management in place, using various methods that are formalised, such as PRINCE2® or Agile Project Management™, or an in-house developed method. However, the issue here is that these methods on their own do not have tools or methods of analysing the impact that the project delivery method, or what the project is actually delivering, will have on the environment and so address sustainability. Such an analysis needs to understand the organization’s strategy on sustainability and the goals of the project/programme in hand. Then rate these goals against the processes and products of the project, paying specific attention to the “triple bottom line” (John Elkington, in his book ‘Cannibals with Forks’ - 1997) as the Social, Environmental and Economical aspects. Or as often known as People, Planet, Profit. There is a tool called the P5 Standard. Once documented, this analysis would play a key part in the project delivery ensuring that areas of high impact would be addressed and monitored, so that a review on completion of the project would be able to identify how successful or not the project was from a Sustainability aspect (and containment), and specifically in relation to the organization’s own strategy. With regards to those areas where there is low impact, being able to report back to shareholders and stakeholders on the positive outcome of the project and its sustain- ability impact. Incorporating the standards, noted above, as part of this analysis ensures that the project being managed and delivered is being done so with the best methods to address sustainability and the environment.
antony.dellaporta@
greenprojectmanagement.org
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