Integrating Sustainability Into Major Projects

CHAPTER 4Understanding What Is Important

Integrating and managing sustainability on a major project requires a custom approach that can be adapted to the conditions of each project. The first step in creating a custom approach is to understand what is important for your specific project. But as you can tell from the variety of standards and guidelines discussed in the previous chapter, there are hundreds of possible topics that a project could look at for better sustainability management. Like all good project management, it is important to look at these topics strategically and focus on managing those most important to the project owners, the project team, government regulators, and the local communities.

The tools and models explained in this chapter will help you identify the sustainability topics important to your project and to key stakeholders, map the sustainability topics, map external factors, and create the sustainability value chain. These tools and models can help the project team assess the full suite of sustainability topics that should be the focus of your program to integrate sustainability into the project. This doesn't mean that you can simply omit the other topics. Rather, by creating focus you ensure that the key risks are managed, and you are capturing opportunities that can have a greater chance for creating a better project.

Later in the book, we will discuss some of the tools used for tracking and managing all of the details including management systems ...