Implementing Sustainable Management with ISO 21500 Standards

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges that companies are facing today is adopting a sustainable project management strategy. Those challenges include the integrations of sustainable practices while securing the satisfaction of stakeholders and simultaneously providing profit [3]. It is becoming increasingly important to incorporate sustainability in projects since stakeholders require ethicality, eco-friendliness, and economic efficiency during the life cycle of a project [6]. Sustainable project management deals with planning, observing, and assessing the project. Evaluating the environmental, social, and economic features of the project's life cycle is an important part for it to achieve sustainability. How successful the sustainability part of the project is depends heavily on how active the project's team and parties are in the project, programs, and portfolios [3]. Integrating sustainability into project management has both strengths and weaknesses. The main advantages of adapting sustainability into project management is the potential of increasing the value of the company, creating opportunities, reducing risk, and increasing profit [7]. While this type of project management is very beneficial for businesses there are some weaknesses. With integrating a sustainability policy into a company comes an additional cost to increase knowledge and skills within the company [20]. The sustainable part of project management demands a lot of time and money. This can be discouraging for project teams since the outcomes of sustainability is a long-term object rather than a short-term. Finally, it can be very costly, especially for smaller companies, to implement sustainability [3].

Big Idea: What is sustainable project management?

Sustainability is among the biggest and most important challenges we face today. Business leaders are currently facing the need to integrate sustainability into their core business function with project management being one of those functions [18]. Projects are essential to implementing more sustainable business practices, and therefore sustainability has become intertwined with project management [19]. "Green" or "sustainable" project management is recognized as one of the most significant global trends in project management today. It can be estimated that project managers aim for project success, and taking sustainability into account could impact their perception of what constitutes success. Although studies have demonstrated the positive impact of incorporating sustainability into business strategy, many people still believe that paying attention to sustainability aspects in projects will be time-consuming and costly, and thus not supportive of project success. [18]

The notion that economic growth, social well-being, and sustainable use of natural resources are interdependent and that none of these development goals can be achieved without taking into account and impacting the other two has become widely accepted [18]. Companies and organizations that seriously consider sustainable development principles integrate them into services, products and processes. Sustainable project management is perceived as a new management paradigm, that assists organizations in dealing with their complexity and dynamics [4].

Sustainable Project Management involves utilizing various methods, tools, and techniques to accomplish a specific goal while taking into account the entire life cycle of the project's outcome to ensure a net positive impact on the environment, society, and economy. As the project management profession evolves, it is redefining what constitutes project success. Rather than solely focusing on time, cost, and scope, the profession is increasingly prioritizing the delivery of the objectives outlined in the business case while also maintaining a life-cycle perspective. The next phase of this evolution involves embracing a sustainability ethos, whereby projects are developed in a way that does not harm the planet or deplete its limited resources. Project management must take a more comprehensive approach to address the social and environmental impacts of each project, ensuring that the world we live in can be sustained and regenerated for future generations. To achieve this, project management must adopt a more holistic and all-encompassing view of the project's impact and value, as shown below [5].

Some people may be unsure how projects can be sustainable, given that sustainability is typically focused on the long-term, whereas projects are typically temporary. However, projects can help organizations achieve their long-term investment objectives. Furthermore, projects and project management occur within a broader environment that extends beyond the limits of the project itself. Project managers often tend to concentrate solely on the process of transforming an idea into a completed project, disregarding the long-term implications of production and disposal. However, it is essential for them to assume responsibility for the project's outcomes, as its impact does not vanish once the project is completed [14].

Application

Many widely-accepted project management standards, such as ISO 21500 and PMBOK made by the Project Management Institute are process-based. In order to introduce sustainability into project management, the processes approach has been the most commonly utilized by leading experts in the field. There are various tools that can be used to make project processes sustainable. All of them include the three pillars of sustainability, which are: economic, environmental and social. The main ones mentioned here are Stakeholder management, Life cycle management, Sustainability Assessment and Decision-making [11].

Stakeholder management

Stakeholder management is becoming increasingly important in sustainability practices and literature as it plays a crucial role in introducing sustainability within companies by enabling participation in the agreement of the sustainable product or process's meaning and the development of sustainability assessment indices for a specific project. Furthermore, the process of integrating sustainability into a company requires the crossing of boundaries throughout the supply chain [15].

When it comes to managing a sustainable project, one of the initial challenges is to determine a sustainability strategy for the specific case. In this regard, stakeholder management has been recognized as an effective means of linking the strategy with social and ethical concerns [17].

According to various researches it is essential to connect stakeholder participation with the project life cycle. By including stakeholders in each activity of the project's upstream and downstream stages, the life cycle framework provides them with a comprehensive view that they might not otherwise have [11].

Life Cycle management

The life cycle framework is a primary focus for policies, businesses, and projects that prioritize sustainability criteria. Understanding the various life cycles involved in a project and how they interact with each other is an important starting point for aligning project management standards with sustainable development principles. In the process industry, there are typically three life cycles: • Project life cycle: This involves the stages of idea generation, development, and implementation. • Asset/Process life cycle: This life cycle encompasses the design and development, construction, operation/implementation, and removal of the service. • Product life cycle: This cycle involves the deliverable, which generates income for the company [8].   The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used tool in industry to assess the environmental impacts of products, but it is often not practical for evaluating concepts at the early stages of development. This is because conducting a full LCA requires a significant amount of detailed information that is typically not available during the initial concept design stage.The life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used tool in industry to assess the environmental impacts of products, but it is often not practical for evaluating concepts at the early stages of development. This is because conducting a full LCA requires a significant amount of detailed information that is typically not available during the initial concept design stage [11].

Sustainability assessment

Various reference frameworks are available to assess sustainability, including those developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), United Nations Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD), Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), and Wuppertal Institute. These frameworks cover economic, environmental, and social aspects [9].

The assessment of sustainability can be utilized for both project management and strategic decision-making. To ensure that sustainable outcomes are achieved, the sustainability assessment process must be explicitly designed to do so. A crucial factor in distinguishing between various practical applications of sustainability assessment is the sustainability framework or concept incorporated in each process [16]. Sustainable assessment tools are methods that can facilitate the comparison of various project or policy options and simplify the decision-making process [11]. A holistic framework for sustainability assessment tools was developed by Ness et al. (2007), consisting of three categories: • Indicators and indices • Product-related tools • Integrated assessment [12].

Decision making

Decision making can refer to selecting the most suitable project or determining the most sustainable alternative once a project has been chosen. As sustainability has multiple dimensions, the analysis is always multi-criteria and, in some cases, multi-objective as well.

Some specific techniques or proposals that have been used for decision making are:

There are various decision-making tools that can be used to integrate sustainability considerations, including: • Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP): Is used to determine the weight of sustainability indicators and sub-indicators at different levels, specifically in the steel industry. • Analytic Network Process (ANP) and Distance to Target (DT) method: a method into a decision-making support system designed for developing new products that are more eco-effective than a previous reference product. • Fuzzy rules systems: designed to select sustainable projects or portfolios regardless of type. • Value management: Incorporates sustainability issues into its structure. • Cognitive reasoning maps: illustrated to analyze the complexities and interactions between different sustainability indicators in infrastructure project assessment. • Decision windows: critical phases in the decision-making process to analyze relationships between integrated information, environmental values and sub-decisions [11].

Limitation

Strengths

Incorporating sustainability into project management has several advantages to organizations. It has the potential to enhance organizational value, create prospects, mitigate risks, boost profits, and lower expenses. Furthermore, it facilitates companies to access new markets, leading to increased revenue opportunities [1].

In addition, integrating sustainability into organizational management enables product differentiation, giving companies a competitive edge. This, in turn, increases their chances of attracting customers and boosting sales. Sustainable practices make companies more appealing in the market as modern consumers are environmentally conscious. Thus, sustainable organizations improve their reputation, which in turn attracts more customers and boosts sales [10].

The integration of sustainability in project management also helps reduce risks for both projects and the business overall, as risk management practices are typically included in sustainability plans. By detecting risks early and developing mitigation measures, project managers can prevent potential losses for the company [10]. Additionally, sustainability can lower costs related to resources, such as energy and finances, by promoting the conservation of these resources and encouraging the use of renewable energy, which tends to be cheaper. Furthermore, sustainability initiatives can improve process efficiency, resulting in minimized production costs and costs associated with other processes during the project execution phase [1].

Weaknesses

While the integration of sustainability in project management offers significant benefits for businesses, it also comes with several drawbacks. Firstly, it incurs additional costs to develop knowledge and competencies in sustainability and implement a sustainability plan within the organization [21].

Implementing sustainability in project management does also require a significant commitment of resources, such as time and money. This can be challenging for project teams as sustainability outcomes focus on the long-term rather than the short-term [13]

Another weakness is that smaller companies, particularly startups, may find it challenging to adopt sustainability practices effectively due to the high costs involved in the process. Thus, these companies may be unable to fully integrate sustainability into their project management practices [13].

The three pillars of sustainability model has as well been criticized for promoting exchanges between the pillars and not recognizing the interrelated and varied considerations that can fall under the sustainability label. This is because even within one of the pillars, such as the environmental pillar, there can be competing priorities and trade-offs that need to be addressed in decision-making. Additionally, the current assessment paradigm has been described as reductionist, as it does not fully account for the interrelationships between a system's components or the multiple and legitimate perspectives that may exist in sustainability assessments [11].

Finally, life cycle assessment is more efficiently used in production systems that are standardized as opposed to those that are not. Although a well-defined methodology, it may not be practical to standardize the application of life cycle assessment in specific sectors, according to the same authors [2].

References

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