The world is becoming more aware of the devastating impacts of climate change, and many businesses realising how important sustainability is to their future operations. In fact, more than nine out of ten CEOs believe that pursuing sustainability is critical for the future success of their companies.
To create a more sustainable world, we need to make our projects more sustainable. But just how do we do that? This blog discusses the rise of sustainable project management and five ways you can start making your projects more sustainable.
Sustainable Project Management is on the rise
Research from Deloitte has shown that 28% of consumers have stopped buying certain products due to ethical or environmental concerns, with the percentage rising to 45% in Gen Z consumers. Roughly half of consumers are willing to spend more on brands that have more ethical and environmentally friendly practices.
But keeping track and remaining transparent about an organisation’s sustainability efforts is a challenge when these measurements and techniques are not considered and embedded into project processes. What often ends up occurring is a lot of greenwashing, over-promising and under-delivering on sustainability pledges that can generate further distrust in brands and companies.
To accommodate the increasing demand for accountability and transparency on sustainability efforts, many organisations are adding new sustainability dimensions to their pre-existing project processes on an ad-hoc basis. However, as compliances continue to change and consumers become more vigilant, this method may not cut it. That’s why organisations need sustainable project management.
What is Sustainable Project Management?
Though there is no single definition, professor of project and programme management Gilbert Silvius defines it as
“.. the planning, monitoring and controlling of project delivery and support processes, with consideration of the environmental, economical and social aspects of the life-cycle of the project’s resources, processes, deliverables and effects, aimed at realising benefits for stakeholders, and performed in a transparent, fair and ethical way that includes proactive stakeholder participation.”
There may not be one single sustainable project management methodology as it is used as an overarching term and is adapted by multiple frameworks. However, five statements encapsulate their fundamental ideas.
Sustainable project management is an approach that:
- Considers the entirety of the Triple Bottom Line perspective.
- Considers the entirety of a project’s life cycle including all project-related activities to the end outputs.
- Actively and openly engages with stakeholders rather than simply managing their expectations.
- Takes responsibility for its actions towards society and the planet.
- Actively considers the short term and long term impacts of all project activities and outputs.
How To Make Your Projects More Sustainable
- Consider the greater project context and expand stakeholder engagement
For projects to be truly sustainable, they need to consider the greater context they operate within as well and expand their stakeholder involvement. Where traditional project management approaches would typically focus on the direct sphere of influence of the project itself, sustainable projects need to consider both the long-term and short-term impacts as well as the local and global impacts of their project activities on the environment and society.
This is illustrated in the diagram shown below.
Sustainable projects also have to consider beyond the typical stakeholder confines of clients, customers and senior management and will have to expand to consider the likes of environmental protection groups, human rights groups and NGOs. Doing so ensures that project activities are considering the needs, desires and risks they pose on a wide range of actors and groups.
- Improve schedule and resource management
One of the best ways to be more sustainable is to be more efficient. From reducing waste, cutting down delivery costs to reallocating resources more effectively, improving project efficiency not only improves profitability but also reduces project wastage. This is particularly critical for industries with high environmental impact such as the construction industry as research shows that as much as 30% of all delivered building materials end up as waste.
- Adapt project selection criteria, success measurements, and dimensions
One of the biggest reasons why projects are failing to hit their sustainability objectives is that their selection criteria, success measurements and project dimensions are not built around sustainability. If projects have been selected and measured by financial benefit alone, it will be hard to measure less quantitative benefits such as environmental and social impacts as well as customer brand perception.
Make sure to expand your project selection process to multi-dimensional criteria that consider both tangible and intangible benefits. Additionally, measuring project success needs to go beyond projects being on-time, on-budget and within scope. Sustainable projects need to be evaluated and assessed holistically through different dimensions across the entire life cycle of the project, its activities and its outputs.
- Select sustainable project inputs and materials
If your project inputs are more sustainable, you can improve the overall sustainability of your projects. Thankfully, new innovations are cropping up every day in nearly every field to try to offer more sustainable alternatives to our current project inputs. From recycled food waste into sustainable leathers, plastic waste being turned into bricks and transparent solar panels, the innovations are endless.
However, it does not simply stop at materials. Projects can be more sustainable by further evaluating the environmental and social performance of their potential suppliers. If their suppliers also have sustainable processes, this reduces the overall footprint of the project and ensures the highest levels of transparency and accountability within the supply chain.
- Make project reporting and communication more transparent
The core principles of sustainability are transparency and accountability. You can make your projects more accountable and transparent by ensuring that communication is more open, frequent, consistent and proactive. Rather than merely informing stakeholders on a need to know basis, sustainable projects will constantly be communicating and collaborating with their stakeholders to consider their needs and desires when making decisions within the project.
Additionally, to reflect a more sustainable focus, your project reports will require new sustainability dimensions. Have a look at the P5 Standards by Green Project Management to learn more about the many different dimensions you can add to your project reporting activities to maintain the utmost transparency and accountability with your stakeholder.,
Get Started on Your Sustainable Project Management Journey
You have the five tips on how to make your projects more sustainable and now you want to get started on your sustainable project management journey! Amazing! However, you can already guess that it may not be an easy process. With all these added dimensions and complexities, managing projects without the right PPM solution can be almost impossible.
A proper PPM solution like pmo365 can make sure your project processes are optimised for sustainable practices and can integrate with your pre-existing data and platforms. Make sure to scan the market for the best PPM solution that can help you on your sustainability journey!
“The opinions expressed by BizWitty Contributors are their own, not those of BizCover and should not be relied upon in place of appropriate professional advice. Please read our full disclaimer."
