One of the fundamental principles of project management is that early planning and establishing structure is critical to project success. The classic project management influence diagram (see Figure 5.1) shows the how early investment in project management allows the project team to influence the outcome of the project. Making changes later in the project ends up costing more than if they are addressed early in the project. The same concept is very true of sustainability management and the integration of sustainability into project development. Investing the time upfront to ensure that sustainability integration provides project teams the ability to influence success and manage better projects.

Traditional project management views sustainability as a separate topic often relegated to another department or external consultant. This traditional approach misses out on the opportunity to control sustainability issues. Not having control over the management of sustainability can increase project risk or result in significant delays and rework because teams must respond to constraints or issues raised by regulators or local communities as the project progresses.

Furthermore, it is far worse is to wait for major issues like a significant construction delay or a lawsuit to attempt to fix sustainability issues. There are numerous examples of projects being shutdown mid-construction or requiring rework because of issues that could have been avoided if they were identified earlier in the process and managed in a proactive manner.

Integrating sustainability into project management requires looking at all the tools being used and making sure that sustainability is fully integrated into the structure and details of the management systems. This is not a difficult process but will require the support of everyone in the project team.

In this chapter we will address integrating sustainability into the main project management tools, including:

• Project Steering Committee
• Project Charter
• Organizational Structure

  

• Project Schedule
• Project Execution Plan
• Communications Plan
• Change Management

In subsequent chapters, we will focus on specific tools that can support integrating sustainability into project management, including:

• Stakeholder Engagement Tools (Chapter 6)
• Risk Management (Chapter 7)
• Sustainability Management Tools (Chapter 8)

5.1 Sustainability Steering Committee 

One of the first and most important sustainability management tasks is to create a Sustainability Steering Committee to provide the project team with direction and create a central point for discussion and decision making around sustainability topics. The committee can be the voice of the project owner to ensure that short-term, project-delivery thinking is balanced with longer-term sustainability thinking.

Responsibilities of the Sustainability Steering Committee might include:

• Provide direction and strategy for the project.
• Provide a platform for open discussion among the project team leadership.
• Review and communicate major risks and opportunities.
• Develop key messaging for external communications.
• Guide the project's response to critical issues and emergencies.
• Make decisions on key issues to resolve conflict in the project team.
• Provide direction for commitments, sustainability metrics and reporting.
• Track performance against sustainability plans and targets.

Membership of the Sustainability Steering Committee should include key decision makers as well as the project leaders who are involved in sustainability issues or will need to manage the impact from the project's decisions and actions. Membership should include:

• Owner Representative(s)/Board Member(s)
• Project Director
• Head of Finance
• Legal
• Sustainability
• Engineering
• Procurement
• Construction
• Human Resources
• Operations
• Communications

The committee will be expected to provide direction and strategy for the project, which includes the integration of sustainability into the project charter and development of the sustainability policy. The sustainability policy will need to be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect the evolution of the project and input from the local community and other stakeholders.

The committee will also act as a forum for information sharing across disciplines and to ensure a balanced response to project issues. By providing a platform for open discussion among project leadership, the committee can help to manage key issues, ensure proactive dispute resolution, and encourage project leadership to look for innovative solutions, rather than viewing sustainability as win-lose proposition.

As we will discuss more in Chapter 7 on Risk Management, sustainability issues can be a major source of project risk and opportunity. The Sustainability Steering Committee has a role to play in reviewing project risks and prioritizing risk management plans to effectively mitigate potential impacts. The committee should also take a lead role in looking at opportunities for project improvements that not only reduce risk but also create better projects.

Communicating a clear and consistent project message that reflects the sustainability policy and project goals and objectives is critical to achieving and maintaining a clear vision of the project for both internal and external audiences. The committee should be involved in developing and approving key messaging for the project.

The collection of senior leaders on the Sustainability Steering Committee creates an ideal group to deal with and manage critical issues and emergencies, such as media issues and community protests. By having a mix of owner representatives, project leadership, legal, and sustainability groups in the same room, the project can provide a measured and well thought out response to issues if necessary.

In many cases, sustainability objectives align with overall project objectives. However, it would be naïve to suggest that there will not be times when sustainability objectives are not aligned with project goals. This typically happens when short-term project decision making collides into long-term sustainability thinking. The Sustainability Steering Committee can act as a mediator to discuss issues and find creative solutions and, if necessary, make decisions regarding key issues to resolve these conflicts.

The committee can lead the development of sustainability key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be integrated into the KPIs for the overall project. Each member of the committee will have responsibility for ensuring that relevant information from their discipline, regarding commitments, constraints, alternatives, and opportunities for example, is provided to the committee and is being properly considered.

The committee will also perform regular performance reviews against sustainability KPIs and make recommendations to adjust the programs to reflect changing conditions, new information, and project evolution from design to construction to operations.

5.2 Project Charter

A well-developed project charter provides everyone on the project team with a shared understanding of the project's foundation. It provides basic information related to what will be built, project objectives, and how everyone will work together to achieve the project goals. Establishing a clear charter provides the project owner with the ability to define the project to the project team and the project stakeholders. Once approved, the project charter provides a baseline for the team and can be regularly referred to in order to keep the project on mission, support change management, and guide decision making.

Integrating sustainability into the project charter requires considering each element of the charter and then evaluating how the organization's objectives, sustainability challenges, and local community interests can be included to help create clear objectives and a vision for the project. The structure and contents of project charters varies across industries and organizations but Table 5.1 lists some of the typical topics that they address. It also lists some details that have traditionally been included and some sustainability topics that are often included in modern projects.

The project charter should be created during early project development (i.e. prefeasibility) but will need to be updated as the project moves through design, development, and construction to ensure that it continues to capture the project's main objectives and challenges.

5.3 Sustainability Policy

A sustainability policy is an important document that provides a standard set of guidelines for the entire team to follow through all stages of the project. Policies will often address a wide range of topics that support the project's sustainability and contribute to the sustainable development of the local community in areas such as health, safety, and environmental management, and sincere engagement with the local community.

The policy should apply to all project employees, including consultants, contractors, and suppliers. Everyone will be expected to demonstrate their personal commitment to the project sustainability goals through their decisions and actions. To ensure that everyone understands and remembers the policy, it should be included in employee contracts and procurement contracts, posted on bulletin boards, used in management system documents, and incorporated into employee performance metrics.

The sustainability policy can also be used for external communication, put on the organization or project social media sites, and included with regulatory filings.

Most sustainability policies can be somewhat aspirational and set a high goal for the project and this can create problems later in project development. If these high standards are not met, stakeholders may push back that you are not meeting your stated policy objectives or commitments. In order to ensure that the policy is achievable, it is important to get full support for the policy from the Sustainability Steering Committee and the project owner.

Sustainability policies may also need to reflect or reference other policies that the organization already has. For example, the organization may have a health and safety policy that focuses on the health of the organization's employees. When that policy is incorporated into the sustainability policy, the focus may need to be expanded to include not just employees but also the health and safety of the local community that may be impacted by project activities like transportation and construction.

Like other organizational policy documents, the sustainability policy should be concise and should reflect the values of the organization and the project. If the project is being completed by an organization that has other projects or other operations, then the policy can be created by adapting existing policy documents to fit the specific conditions and issues identified for the current project (see Chapter 4).

If the organization has been formed for the purpose of developing the project, then the sustainability policy may need to be developed from scratch. There are numerous examples of Sustainability Policies available from other organizations in your industry, which can be borrowed and modified to suit the current project. But it is important to update these policies to reflect new and emerging approaches to sustainability, local issues, and project-specific issues. Some of the topics frequently included in sustainability policies are shown in Table 5.2.

5.4 Project Goals

In traditional project management, key project goals focused exclusively on cost, schedule, and quality. As projects have evolved over time, project teams have added safety to these traditional goals. As requirements for project sustainability continue to grow, teams must also incorporate a broader set of goals related to social responsibility, eco-efficiency, and community development.

Establishing goals and metrics for sustainability can be challenging because they aren't always easy to reduce to simple, measurable metrics or key performance indictors (KPIs). But project teams shouldn't ignore this process simply because it is difficult. The development of goals and metrics for sustainability can be essential for success in a modern project and they help to create better projects for both owners and the local community.

The process to understand and identify the most significant project sustainability topics was described in Chapter 4, and the topics identified through a materiality assessment can provide a starting point for developing project sustainability goals. The process involves taking the top-ranked topics identified in the materiality assessment and provide a metric to track and monitor each of the top-ranked topics. A sample of topics (taken from Table 4.6) and related metrics is shown in Table 5.3. The specific topics and metrics will be dependent on the specific challenges of each project. The Global Reporting Initiative, which was discussed in Chapter 3, is a good source of possible metrics to use.

5.5 Structuring the Project Organization

There is no standard organizational structure for a major project that has emerged as the best way to integrate sustainability. Each project team will include many different organizations (owner's team, consultants, contractors, and suppliers) and each will have their own structure that fits with their organization, and the role that each group plays on the project. The organizational structure will also change dramatically as the project evolves from a few people during early feasibility studies to hundreds of team members during construction.

In an ideal future world where sustainability has been fully integrated into the delivery of major projects, there may not be a need for specific sustainability roles within the project team. But while project teams are still developing the skills and experience required to integrate sustainability, there continues to be a need for specific sustainability-related roles involving:

• Organization and management of sustainability topics
• Coordination and collaboration between departments, groups, and organizations
• Oversight of risks and opportunities
• Sustainability communication both internally and externally
• Training and education of project teams

Integrated sustainability teams should report to both the project director, who is responsible for delivering every part of the project including sustainability, and the owner or Sustainability Steering Committee. Reporting to the Sustainability Steering Committee provides the necessary support if there is conflict between the project's traditional objectives of on-time and on-budget delivery, and the sustainability objectives of minimizing the environmental footprint and maintaining a positive and strong relationship with local communities. A simplified organizational chart is shown in Figure 5.2.

Incorporating sustainability into the project structure can be challenging but it is better than having a Sustainability Team completely separate from the rest of the project team, especially if that team is a separate consulting organization. This can create significant communication issues and reduces the opportunity for collaboration and innovative solutions that can help create better projects.

The organizational structure should also reflect the responsibilities of the Sustainability Team, which can range from a small core team focused on the high-level sustainability program or a large team that manages the many departments supporting the delivery of sustainability activities. With a focused approach, the Sustainability Team will act as an oversight and support group that is responsible for sustainability policy, management systems, commitment tracking, and auditing.

If the Sustainability Team is given a broader mandate, then they would be responsible for oversight and support, and manage many project activities directly related to ensuring sustainability goals and objectives are achieved. These activities could include permits and approvals, environmental management, health and safety, stakeholder engagement, government relations, and communications.

The structure and responsibilities will also change over time, with the Sustainability Team being responsible for a broad range of activities in the early stages of the project (when the team is small), then evolving to an oversight role as responsibilities shift and the team grows. For example, during early site work (surveying or geotechnical drilling), health and safety management may fall under the sustainability team, but when the project moves into full-scale construction the construction manager may be better placed to manage health and safety issues.

5.6 Project Execution Plan

A core document for planning the development of major projects is the Project Execution Plan (PEP), which describes how the team will deliver the project. Each group or department completes a section describing how they will deliver their piece of the project and the project management team brings it all together into a comprehensive plan.

Typically, sustainability issues will be covered in a PEP by adding separate sections for environmental management, permitting, and stakeholder engagement. But this approach is superficial, with sustainability being an add-on to the side of the project. It does not facilitate full integration of sustainability issues into the PEP, nor into project planning.

A more comprehensive approach that ensures that sustainability risks and opportunities are managed by the entire project team involves incorporating sustainability into every section of the PEP. Each department will need to assess how sustainability could impact on their scope of work and what tools and processes they should use to manage sustainability. There is a temptation to add this discussion at the end of each section, but a better approach is to add the sustainability discussion at the beginning of each section so that it can help to guide development of each department's execution plan for. For most departments, sustainability should be added right after an introductory section, outlining the key issues, metrics, methods, and processes that will be used by the department. An sample outline that could be used for each section of the PEP is provided in the tip box but should be modified to fit the specific needs and challenges of each project and each department.

Each department or group that is developing a section of the PEP should spend some time understanding the project issues, challenges, and opportunities that were identified in the previous sections of the book (Chapters 3 and 4). It is important for each group to assess how these issues apply to their work and how they can improve their portion of the project by creating innovative solutions or following sustainability standards and guidelines that apply to their discipline. As we discussed in Chapter 1, sustainability is a team sport and it is important for everyone on the project team to consider how their activities can have a positive impact and help create a better project.

The PEP also must address how sustainability fits into other parts of project management and execution that are described in this chapter and in subsequent chapters, including:

• Stakeholder Engagement Plan (Chapter 6)
• Risk Management (Chapter 7)
• Decision making (Chapter 8)
• Procurement strategies (Chapter 11)
• Construction planning (Chapter 12)
• Change management
• Communications plan
• Human Resources plan
• Integrating sustainability into project schedules, work breakdown structures, and document management systems

5.7 Project Schedule

Project schedules are a critical component of project management – in particular, starting the project on schedule, meeting the project end date, and starting operations on schedule. With sustainability requirements creating some of the biggest risks to project schedules, it is important to proactively integrate sustainability into project schedules and planning activities during project planning. Schedule impacts can come from both project activities being dependent on sustainability activities (like community meetings and acquiring permits and approvals) and from sustainability activities that are dependent on project activities (such as the need for design drawings for permits or procurement plans for community agreements).

The value of integrating sustainability into the project schedule comes from understanding the linkages and dependencies between sustainability and project delivery to:

• Optimize schedules.
• Understand and better manage potential delays.
• Understand how changes to design can impact approvals and the overall project schedule.

The project schedule should include key sustainability milestones and time lines that include major stakeholder engagement events and permit deliverables. Scheduling and tracking approvals and major permits should include target dates to submit documents to government regulators that are based on an understanding of when project needs the permit and how long a typical government review period will be for the approval.

The schedule should include the timeline and level of effort required to prepare materials that support sustainability activities and deliverables, and attend the necessary meetings and community events, including:

• Drawings and information to support workshops and community meetings (maps, fly-through videos, 3D models, etc.)
• Design documents for approvals and permit applications
• Alternatives analysis required by regulators or communities
• Community design workshops
• Procurement workshops for local suppliers
• Local job training programs so that work crews are ready for the start of construction

The project schedule should also include local community events, holidays, and school schedules, such as if there is a portion of the year where there is a religious or government holiday, community gathering, or hunting season. The project schedule should account for potential delays related to such events, manpower shortages, or other issues so that there are no surprises.

The project schedule should also consider the financing schedule and how project and sustainability documents support project financing. The schedule can reflect when major financing will be required, what documents will be required to support financing, and what time will be required to develop the documents, complete due diligence, and acquire the financing.

Sustainability issues may appear to be more difficult to schedule than traditional project events due to uncertainty around when approvals will be granted and when community events might occur. But it is still better to integrate sustainability into the project schedule to document most-likely scenarios and establish the correct linkages and dependencies to other schedule items so that changes can be managed and tracked. Building sustainability into the schedule also allows scenario planning to be done to understand the impact of major design changes or the potential delays caused by loss of community support.

5.8 Project Communications Plan

The Project Execution Plan should include a section on communications to ensure that the entire project team is aware of the key messaging and policies in order to ensure a clear and consistent message is communicated outside of the project team. The communications plan in the PEP is separate but supports the communications that is focused on stakeholder engagement, which is discussed in Chapter 8. The communications plan should also support corporate communications plans that are focused on maintaining the organization's brand, and promoting the project to owners, shareholders, or investors.

The Project Communications Plan should include a discussion of key topics, including:

• Messaging and approved documentation
• Roles and responsibilities (meaning who can talk to whom)
• Training
• Tracking and auditing
• Complaints and escalation
• Emergency response

5.9 Change Management

The Project Execution Plan should include processes for change management that address how a change in one part of the project can impact other parts of the project. The procedures should help avoid unintended consequences where positive impacts from a change are overshadowed by negative impacts that were not expected. This is particularly true for changes that create sustainability issues where government regulations or community agreements can limit the changes that can be made or slow down the implementation of the changes. For instance, if a design change implemented to reduce capital costs results in an unexpected environmental emission that is not covered by project permits or approvals, it could create a schedule delay while permit applications are updated and government sign-off is achieved.

To reduce the risk of unexpected impacts, change management procedures should include a review of engineering design or procurement changes to ensure that there are no impacts on permits, the environment, or the local community. If the project uses a change management sign-off procedure, then the Sustainability Manager should be included in the process to ensure that these issues are addressed.

Project changes can also be initiated by sustainability topics in several ways:

• Community design workshops might create opportunities for design changes that can improve the overall project.
• Community complaints or audit findings might generate a requirement to change project procedures to avoid environmental damage or reduce community concerns.
• Ongoing evolution of industry best practices from projects could create opportunities for project improvements.
• New information regarding environmental conditions, changing climate, or the local communities could create a need for project changes.

Once initiated, these sustainability-driven changes should follow the project change management procedures to ensure that there are no unexpected impacts on the project feasibility or performance.

5.10 Project Team Roles and Responsibilities

Project Execution Plans will often include a Roles and Responsibilities section to clarify which departments are responsible for which areas of the project, and how members of the management team will mutually support each other. Sustainability affects every project department and each of these departments can impact external stakeholders and impact the project's success. Therefore, it is important to include appropriate sustainability topics in each department's list of responsibilities.

The Sustainability Team will be responsible for ensuring that project teams and subcontractors understand the project commitments and the expectations for dealing with stakeholders including the public, regulators, and indigenous communities through orientation and training programs.

The roles and responsibilities for key project team members are described in Table 5.4. This same approach can be taken to include sustainability issues in the responsibilities of other managers on the project team including Health and Safety, Human Resources, Legal, and Communications.

5.11 Summary

Integrating sustainability into project management activities as early as possible is critical to the success of major project. This helps ensure that sustainability issues and challenges are identified and managed along with the rest of the project. Taking the time to ensure that sustainability becomes a fundamental part of project management allows project teams the ability to influence success and manage better projects. If sustainability is left out of project management activities then the project team has no control over critical issues that can impact project success.

The following chapters dig deeper into the details of project management around stakeholder engagement, risk management, and sustainability management. The book then moves into the details of project delivery, with a focus on integrating sustainability into design, procurement, and construction.