Sustainability: How to deliver sustainable projects and still meet the sponsor’s requirements

Michelle Littlemore (Northumbria University) and Karen Thompson (Responsible Project Management) know a thing or two about projects - that we’re still expected to deliver “profitable” results even when delivering in a sustainable way.

At APM’s 2024 Conference, they delivered an excellent presentation and workshop while encouraging a packed audience to explore the issues of understanding how we can balance competing demands from diverse project stakeholders, communities and nature.

Getting sponsors on board

The first challenge will be familiar to many project managers reading this: how to get sponsors to even consider the various dimensions of sustainability and regeneration as aims for their projects and key principles for delivering the project, when they introduce an element of risk and potentially higher cost.

Dr Thompson and Ms Littlemore started by demonstrating value and illustrated the talk with examples. They explained how project leadership can be persuaded to get onboard with sustainability because such issues can, if left unaddressed, add delays and cost to delivering a project.

The value of sustainable project outcomes

Sustainability is a catch-all for a great many things. It covers environment (climate change, pollution, biodiversity, local impacts), economic (jobs, training, opportunities and activities), human (mental wellbeing, physical health) and community (public spaces, engagement, agency in our own future); and it covers sustainability (not making it worse) and regeneration (actively making it better).

Many projects fail – with cost overruns, time overruns, failure to meet pre-determined benefits, failure to respond to change. Bringing in sustainability can put projects into context and align them better with objectives and benefits, which often improves outcomes.

But by introducing sustainability goals to a project, it can contribute to the organisation’s success as well as the project’s success in other ways. Many organisations have to report on carbon emissions and progress towards Net Zero, and some voluntarily report ESG (Environment, Social and Governance). When a project undertakes to address sustainability, it can support this reporting and enhance the reputation of the organisations involved. In turn, these considerations can help to recruit and retain talent, to win contracts and increase market share.

Perhaps more importantly, it can reduce resistance from groups affected by a project or its impacts, including advocates for those without a voice. Resistance can be extremely costly; in delays, additional costs and missing bonus payments. So anything that reduces obstructions to project progress can be extremely valuable.

What does the project manager need to do?

Start with involving people in the change. “No decision about me, without me”, comes from the NHS but it could be applied to all situations.

Actively create transparency; transparency in the business case, in engagement, in the decisions being made, in the consequences and emergent benefits and dis-benefits. This involves measurement and reporting: the natural and social resources to be used, depleted, regenerated and restored by the project. Today, there is growing concern for our use of ‘free’ resources, such as clean air, water, human well-being and communities, that may be difficult to measure. But APM’s Sustainability interest network members can help choose the most appropriate measure for a specific project, such as carbon accounting, biodiversity gain/loss, social value etc.

Understand project context and consequences. A project is not a siloed event, rather each project is a set of interventions into existing social, economic and natural systems, and systems thinking can be useful for developing understanding of the complex interactions involved. Systems thinking seeks to understand dependencies among the project, its environment and the transition required to realise benefits. For example, how the environment can impact the project and how to work with the environment (such as using the seasons for work requiring different temperature and humidity); and how the project itself impacts the environment (creating tracks for use by project vehicles which will become walkways for the community, stabilising slopes with plants instead of steel).

The 2012 Olympic Games in UK is an excellent example. Contractors were required to use sustainable approaches and deliver sustainable outcomes, and many built policies and frameworks around this and used it as a marketing message for future work. In many organisations, your colleagues are just waiting for someone else to take the lead, and that could be you – leading conversations on sustainability and regeneration. You don’t need to be an expert to ask questions. With templates from Responsible Project Management and APM’s Sustainability Interest Network, you have a head start.

Being a responsible project manager – and how nature does it

You won’t change everything at once, and nor should you be disappointed if it doesn’t happen immediately. Figure 1 illustrates a cycle from nature.

This natural cycle can be used for every project. Think about how the energy at each stage can be used to increase or extend the opportunities for regenerating and sustaining resources that may still be ‘free’ at the point of use but are never-the-less finite.

Lichens are another example. Lichens are neither plants nor animals, rather they are a symbiosis of two separate organisms: a fungus and an alga. Novel approaches for humans working with nature will be required. The Sustainability IN in APM will be a symbiosis.

Conclusion

Sustainability and regeneration are gaining momentum. We can stay in our comfort zone and hope to retire before someone holds us to account, or we can be part of the change.

But we don’t have to act alone – people already incorporate sustainability into project management, however, there’s still room to be an outstanding leader.

Sustainability is a necessary skill for all. Humanity cannot continue to develop in ways that exceed the limits of our finite planet. We all have an important role to play, not just as consumers but also as members of the project profession in creating the future for other. So, don’t delay. Join APM’s sustainability interest network.