Sustainable project management

Introduction

One of the greatest and most far-reaching challenges of our time is to ensure that the impact of human activity on the planet is becoming more sustainable to enable future generations, wildlife, and nature to thrive and sustain itself. We, as humans, are still facing social inequality, poverty and hunger while we are deteriorating nature, wildlife and the planet itself with our immense impact and footprint. Sustainable action and mindset is has for many become the most important agenda. A developing approach companies use to address implementation of sustainability in their processes is sustainable project management.

The UN Sustainability Goals has since 2015 put sustainability on the world agenda, but also agreements like the Paris Agreement, shows that there is a political consensus towards a more sustainable world. Companies all over the world are realizing that they also need to take action to support these goals. The customers of companies are starting to expect sustainable action while directives and legislation like the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Standards (CSRD) dictates companies to report their sustainable actions. Furthermore, companies are also realizing that future economic profit is tightly connected to a more sustainable world and that sustainability actually can become a profitable business.

Several different approaches can be taken to implement sustainability in a company from top management to local initiatives at employee level. Sustainable Project management can help execute and communicate a systematized inclusion of sustainability into projects that puts action behind sustainability strategies and proactively suggest a mindset and work approach.

This article starts with an overview of sustainable project management and the role of the project manager. Along this, the topic is compared to the more traditional view of project management while also briefly describing how it coheres with program and portfolio management. The article continuous with a state-of-the-art overview of how to apply and implement sustainable project management in an organization or company. Finally, the article reflects on the benefits, challenges and limitations of sustainable project management.

What is Sustainable Project Management

As an independent field, sustainable project management is rather young, but it is developed and based on a merge of the commonly known and older principles of 1) sustainability (environmental, social and economical) and 2) project management.:

1. The sustainable development area (focusing on SDGs etc.): The area was originally idealistic but when formalized with goal and pragmatism, saw the need for project management inclusion and continuity towards the goals. This use of project management as a means to solve sustainability issues is is often refered to as "Management of sustainable development project."
2. Classical project management of sustainability projects: With an increasing focus on sustainability, companies initiated projects towards sustainability often refered to as "Management of green project." Sometines there has also been a focus on a sustainable process more than the project outcome refereed to as "Sustainable management of projects."

These two areas have merged into what today is known as Sustainable Project Management, where the project itself, is the road towards sustainability. An important part sustainable project management is that it proposes that sustainability considerations and implementation are equally important in the project process and outcome. .

As stated by The Green Project Management (GPM):

"Sustainable Project Management is the application of methods, tools, and techniques to achieve a stated objective while considering the project outcome's entire lifecycle to ensure a net positive environmental, social, and economic impact."

While traditional project management focuses on cost, time, and scope as success criterias, sustainable project management takes a more holistic approach by incorporating sustainability as an equally critical component of success. It combines the project success, goals of the organization, sustainability and prosperity of nature and people to a homogenous and intertwined self-reinforcing goal that is supported through the use of tools, methods, planning, and project management practices. Studies have furthermore shown that the inclusion and application of sustainable project management has a high risk of leading to more and unseen project success. (Maybe add an example)

The project managers role

The sustainability challenge is often mentioned to be approachable from either a top-down (strategies, legislation etc.) or a bottom-up approach (individual persons actions), and that both approaches are needed for successful and impactful implementation that result in actual sustainable solutions . This also applies to companies and organizations, for example a production company that delivers products to its customers. The first, the top-down management approach with the implementation of strategies that dictates sustainability as a company agenda. This can include tangible goal setting, development of Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs) for benchmarking the progress and specific strategies to follow. Secondly, it can come from the bottom-up approach in a specific area of the value chain, eg. using eco-design practices in the product development or in general using specialist knowledge to optimize or innovate a given area. Both approaches will be needed for companies to obtain incremental, but also larger and more systemic changes, towards sustainability in their operations and innovations.

The project manager offers the possibility to combine and align both approaches. A sustainable project management approach can facilitate and govern top-down strategies while also systematizing and replicating and sharing bottom-up practices. Sustainable project management can be the link between the approaches, and a key driver for sustainability communication, implementation and operation in the company. By implementing the approach of sustainable project management, the purpose aspect of the project itself expands to include more than just the ordinary project success criteria, but now also includes the triple bottom line of environmental, social, and economical sustainability for the company and its surroundings.

Many companies have a CSR officer or some sort of sustainability manager. They are often responsible for reporting on sustainability and supporting organization transparency while also having a key role in the development of the companies sustainability strategy and target setting. A sustainable project manager supports the implementation of sustainability across the value chain since they are able to speak the language of the CSR officer, whereas traditional project managers and CSR officers often suffers from miscommunication and a lack of understanding of each others roles and importance.

Benefits of sustainability in project management

Adopting sustainable project management practices not only benefits the environment but can also lead to several economic benefits and increased stakeholder engagement. By minimizing resource consumption, waste generation, and environmental impact, sustainable project management can contribute to a healthier environment for future generations. Moreover, it can reduce costs associated with resource consumption and waste generation, increase energy efficiency, and improve productivity, resulting in long-term economic benefits. In addition, sustainable project management can enhance a company's reputation and brand image, leading to increased market share and customer loyalty. In this article, we will explore each of these benefits in detail and how they contribute to a more sustainable and successful business.

Application of Sustainable Project Management

The Green Project Management (GPM) is a social enterprise and the main driver of sustainable project management tools, methods and standards. GPM have created the PRiSM methodology for application of sustainable project management fully compatible with acknowledged project management standards as the ISO 21500, ISO 14001, ISO 26000, ISO 50001, and ISO 900. The foundation of this methodology is based on the GPM standard, the P5: People, Planet, Prosperity, Process, and Products. . The P5 is a tool for aligning traditional project, program and portfolio management with the organizational sustainability strategies. It support that both project processes and deliveries result in a net positive environmental and social impact while also delivering organizational and local prosperity.

PRiSM

Projects integrating Sustainable Methods (PRiSM) is based on a project lifecycle perspective that includes several steps and tools to use during the different phases of a project. The phases are:

• Pre-Project Phase: Where the project objectives are determined a high-level business case is developed, the project team is selected and initiation is authorized.
• Discovery Phase: Where the gathering of solution requirements and requirements for the next phases are determined. GPM suggest to create an Requirements Document, which includes sustainability, user, functional, non-functional and implementation requirements. This document should help stakeholders understand what needs to be done but not how it should be done. The discovery Phase is also the first where the P5 is used in a P5 Impact Analysis (P5IA). In this phase the first draft of the Sustainable Management Plan (SMP) is developed. This will further be explained later.
• Design Phase(s): Where the solution is developed, business case and Sustainable Management Plan is updated and acceptance criterias are defined. Initially this phase is started by creating a design document (brief) that suggest how the deliverable should be achieved. This phase might need several iterations. P5IA is also performed.
• Delivery Phase(s): Where the delivery of the solution that hopefully achieves the outcomes and benefits intended. This phase might need several iterations. P5IA is also performed, and business case and SMP is updated
• Closure Phases: Where the handover of the delivery is coordinated, where sustainability information for materiality reporting is done. Afterwards the project team is dismantled and the project benefits are realized.

At every phase, it is evaluated if the project and it's business case is still feasible and if it should continue. If it goes on, the next phase is planned. Now, some of the core sustainability aspects of PRiSM will further be explained.

P5 Impact Analysis

The P5 Impact Analysis is based on the PM® P5™ Standard for Sustainability in Project Management which gives a inventory of sustainability topics to consider. The P5 Impact Analysis is best performed in the project team, with relevant stakeholders in a workshop. It has a visual canvas that can be used in the process. It goes through several sub-categories within the triple bottom-line, that for each category has a defined area, a potential impact and impact score and lastly some proposed actions to deal with this impact.

Sustainability Management Plan (SMP)

GPM and others describes how it is essential to create a Sustainability Management Plan, but only very briefly discusses how it can be performed. Due to the lack of guidance to create this SMP, a method and tool called the Sustainable Project Management Canvas was created. It was created based on other Project Management tools and methodologies and intends to give a practical tool that supports the development of a SMP. It's constructed of three parts:

• Part A: Sustainable Development Concepts
• Part B: Sustainability Indicators
• Part C: The project management placeholder and key questions.

The final form of the Sustainable Project Management Canvas is as the name implies a comprehensive visual canvas. Like the more traditional business model canvas it includes many project related elements, like stakeholders, goals, benefits, risk etc. but as the fundamental change the different elements of sustainability is included as a fundamental and unavoidable part of the canvas. It is suggested that the SMP is developed with the proper stakeholders in a workshop, and that it is continually reevaluated and iterated on.

Other relevant methodology outside PRiSM

Through literature review different other methods and tools regarding the implementation of sustainability in project management has been found. In most cases there are already acknowledged and standardized methodologies within the field of project, program and portfolio management, with the inclusion of sustainability in the process and success criterias. Some examples can be seen below:

• Sustainable Prince2
• Sustainable GWW
• Healthy Maturity Assessment Model
• Project Management Maturity Model SPM3

Limitations & Challenges

To be continued...

(Possible) References

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652617317444

https://greenprojectmanagement.org/about/what-is-sustainable-project-management

https://www.apm.org.uk/resources/what-is-project-management/what-is-sustainability-in-project-management/