Читать книгу Integrating Sustainability Into Major Projects - Wayne McPhee - Страница 23

Managing major projects is a messy and complex business. It is getting even more complex with competing priorities for budget, schedule, quality, safety, environment, security, and community. Project teams need to develop the skills, tools, workflows, and thought processes to manage these competing priorities, make informed decisions, and create new solutions that help meet often contradictory project goals. These challenges are also opportunities for innovation, for new approaches, and for collaboration to solve problems.

A key starting point in developing a mindset about sustainability is to be aware that there will be both competing and complementary objectives between the traditional technical and financial goals, and the sustainability goals. Project teams need to embrace this complexity and view sustainability as an opportunity to create a better project, rather than as an annoyance and additional cost. In Reconstructing Value: Leadership Skills for a Sustainable World, the authors refer to this approach as a “sustainability Mindset,” where there is a synthesis of these competing challenges rather than just a compromise:

A sustainability mindset holds that the key challenge is in advancing human development in areas such as prosperity, justice and human rights, while at the same time preserving nature and respecting the regenerative limits of the biosphere.³

The sustainability mindset understands that new major projects are essential to human development but also looks to ensure that the work is done with respect for the environment and the local communities impacted by the project.

Sustainability is creating more complex business and technical environments, and project teams cannot manage increasing project complexity with the same processes and tools that have been used for years. Project teams need to look for ways to improve existing tools and processes to incorporate sustainability. They need to introduce new tools that help manage the increasing complexity, shift roles and responsibilities, and diversify project teams to bring in new and varying skills sets to ensure that sustainability challenges are managed.

By our nature, we are more comfortable solving problems that are familiar. However, with the rapid changes occurring in the world, project teams are often faced with new problems that don't have proven solutions. If we are going to meet the challenges of this new reality, we will need to adapt and find new ways of collaborating and working together to solve problems.

When we face changes that encompass several disciplines, there is a need for collaboration with multidisciplinary teams that can bring a broad range of experience and expertise to the problem. These multidisciplinary project teams are comprised not just of technical specialists, but may include new team members who have valuable knowledge of the challenges facing the project, including socioeconomic and geopolitical experts, academics, stakeholders, and a facilitator who can bring the team together. Complexity is the new reality and project teams need to find ways of working together and with key stakeholders to meet this challenge and create better, more sustainable projects.