We have worked on sustainability management on many different major projects, and in our experience, we have found that there were no practical guides to help with the integration of sustainability into project delivery. The academic literature provides some help, but it does not address the boots-on-the-ground realities of managing sustainability that we have experienced. The tools and processes that are used by corporate head offices or operating plants do not address the short-term, intense level of activity and complex risks of a developing major project. The upfront, one-off engagements and impact assessment processes typically end once the project is approved. And these processes do not provide further guidance on how to turn the expectations and commitments into reality during project delivery.

We have collected tools and processes from the front lines of sustainability management. Using our experiences and lessons learned, we intended for this book to be a useful resource for other project professionals engaged in major project delivery who are looking for new ideas to help them address sustainability challenges and create better projects. We also hope that it can be useful for everyone else involved in the delivery of major projects, including project owners, consultants and contractors, financing organizations, governments, and local communities, who can gain an understanding of the challenges that major projects face and the best practices available to proactively manage these challenges.

It's a New World for Delivering Major Projects

Developing major projects is becoming increasingly complex. Local communities expect social and environmental responsibility, financing is tied to environmental and social performance, and government regulators require more diligence in project design to manage emissions, energy use, and closure requirements. Project teams must manage not just the project budget, schedule, and quality, but also the project's sustainability aspects, such as sharing economic benefits with local communities, eco-efficient design, and environmental protection and impact mitigation.

Managing sustainability on major projects like mines, pipelines, wind farms, ports and airports, offshore and onshore oil and gas, military installations, waste facilities, and other large infrastructure developments poses unique challenges. Each project requires its own customized approach to ensure that social and environmental impacts are managed, and potential benefits are maximized.

So, What Can Project Teams Do? 

Managing sustainability as a standalone function outside of the main project is no longer an acceptable approach. In order to effectively manage sustainability, project teams must embrace sustainability as a team sport. Everyone on the team is a contributor and can help to integrate sustainability into each part of the project delivery. In this book, we presented tools and processes for integrating sustainability that fit into three main themes:

1. Understanding what is important
2. Planning and project management of sustainability
3. Delivering a more sustainable project

Understanding sustainability involves examining the unique aspects of major projects that make them challenging from a sustainability perspective. We have discussed how the perception of space and time are different for project teams, governments, and the local community.

Once you understand the unique challenges and opportunities that your project must address, the team can develop the required planning and project management approaches to coordinate activities and track performance. We have discussed the need for strong leadership from a sustainability steering committee, techniques for integrating sustainability into standard project management and risk management processes, how stakeholder engagement fits into the project, and some specific tools that can help manage sustainability, including a commitment action log and complaints processes.

Project planning becomes reality when the project moves into delivery with detailed design, procurement, and construction. We have provided tools and resources to support design and procurement teams with community engagement, decision making, and dealing with growing issues like climate change. The tools and advice for integrating sustainability into construction help to address environmental management, community engagement, and managing suppliers and contractors. We also looked at commissioning and the transition to operations, as well as eventual closure of the facility with a focus on ensuring stakeholders are engaged throughout these transitions and environmental impacts are managed.

Integrating sustainability into major projects requires a practical approach that is not focused on philosophical principles. Rather, it is focused on specific activities that the project team should start doing, do differently, or simply stop doing. If integrating sustainability does not change behavior, then it will not change how the project is delivered or the outcome of the project.

Managing Complexity

Sustainability is a very complicated field and the best-laid plans will not always work. Integrating sustainability means dealing with human emotions and complex social structures, as well as the already complicated technical requirements of delivering major projects. In many ways, sustainability is more difficult and requires a more diverse set of skills than traditional project delivery. Sustainable design is more challenging than traditional engineering design. Sustainable procurement requires more thought and planning than traditional procurement. Sustainable construction that gets the project built without losing community support takes a more sophisticated and thoughtful project team that can balance complex requirements better than traditional construction teams. Meeting these challenges is very satisfying and allows project teams to finish projects with the knowledge that they have done the best job possible – that they have created a positive impact for the project owners and for the local community.

Integrating sustainability requires knowing how to do your job in addition to understanding the environmental and social impacts of doing that job. But that should not be viewed as an insurmountable challenge, nor something that another team member should look after for you. Tackling sustainability head on creates innovative solutions, reduces risk, improves financial performance, and creates better projects.

What Does It Cost?

People often ask, “This looks complicated. How much does it cost?” There are a number of different approaches that can be used to answer this question:

1. Wrong question. The right question is “How much money will integrating sustainability save us?” Every project we have worked on has seen project cost savings from integrating sustainability that are many times higher than the cost of the program due to collaboration, innovation, and lowering project risks.
2. Treating sustainability management as an extra cost is like treating project management as an extra cost. Good sustainability management is like good project management. Sustainability is critical to project success and adds value to the project.
3. Integrating sustainability into project management and delivery means that you do not need a significant increase in the size of the project team. It just means that the existing team needs to learn how to do their job differently in order to manage sustainability as part of their roles and responsibilities.
4. Sustainability management is a small overall cost and is usually less than the rounding error on the overall cost of the project.
5. Sustainability has become a necessary part of every project. It is better to proactively manage these issues as part of project management than to ignore them and deal with the consequences.

Getting Started

Integrating sustainability into major projects can help to improve project management, reduce risk, and build long-term community support. However, it can seem like a difficult challenge for project teams that have not developed sustainability programs and are unsure where to start.

We find that it is important to understand that the journey to create a more sustainable project is a marathon rather than a sprint. Teams need to get started as early as possible in the project to be successful. Take a look at the project you are currently working on and ask yourself and your team: What are we currently doing to integrate sustainability and where do we need to improve? And then take a first step toward that goal. It may be something as simple as identifying your sustainability concerns or introducing sustainability shares into team meetings.

Even if the project as a whole has not embraced an integrated sustainability approach, individuals and departments can still make their part of the project a little bit better. Procurement teams can find ways of reducing project risks and encouraging contractors to work in an environmentally friendly and socially responsible way. Design teams can use structured decision tools to balance cost and technical specifications with meeting environmental goals and reducing impacts on the local community. Construction teams can implement permit-to-work systems, open communications and other tools to manage sustainability commitments, and keep the support of the local community.

Check out more information on our website www.integratingsustainability.com. We have provided templates of some of the tools and tables discussed in the book. From these you can develop custom tools for your project and get started quickly and confidently.

Sharing Your Stories

Integrating sustainability into major projects is still an emerging field of practice. No two projects are the same, and the usual score cards and checklists will only get you so far. Sustainability teams need to explore all the tools and processes, and you will need to create custom solutions that fit your project location, technology, industry, stakeholders, and owners of the project.

These tools and processes will require ongoing development, more testing, and more sharing of best practices from other practitioners working on the front lines of major projects. If you have experiences, stories, tools, or other best practices that would help fellow project professionals, we invite you to send us an email or share them on our website at www.integratingsustainability.com. Some things we would love to hear from you:

• What is your favorite “success” story?
• What is your favorite “failure” story?
• What lessons have you learned?
• When have you overcome resistance to change in your organization? What approach worked best?
• What challenges do you see emerging over the next 5 to 10 years?
• Are there specific tools or models that you like to use?
• Do you use a specific piece of software and would you recommend it?
• Where do you get your information from about advances in sustainability management?

Final Word

We have covered a lot of ground in this book and dealt with a wide range of sustainability topics. Many of these topics, like local procurement, are distinct fields of practice and already the subject of publications. Here, we have attempted to stitch these project delivery topics together into a comprehensive approach for project management and delivery.

Integrated sustainability is now a critical part of delivering a major project successfully. We hope that this book provides value to you and your team; that it helps elevate the general understanding of how sustainability fits into major project development and inspires new ideas for creating better, more sustainable major projects.