How to reduce your project’s carbon footprint
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The sustainability agenda is something all aspects of business are thinking about, and project management is no exception. We all need to be working towards creating a more sustainable future, and making the right choices on our projects is definitely one way to do that. The first step is to make sure sustainability criteria are included in your documentation templates. You can add sustainable and carbon footprint criteria to your business case templates. Here are some suggestions for how you can consider reducing the carbon footprint on your projects. Create a benchmarkMany companies these days have teams dedicated to energy management and sustainability, so your first point of call should be to check in to see what initiatives are already underway. If your carbon efforts are going to be officially recognised, you need to use official methods of calculating the reduction, with full transparency and a robust, proven measurement process in place. Who in the team will be responsible for tracking and measuring carbon savings, and do you need any additional processes in place to make it happen? A full approach like that might be overkill – if there is no expectation of having to save carbon, you might not want to go down the route of proving that you are in a measurable, transparent way. However, you can still follow the rest of the steps to brainstorm carbon-saving ideas with the team and build in carbon-friendly ways of working. Review project tasksTake a look at the work you are going to be doing on this project. Which tasks are going to generate a carbon calculation that can be measured? What tasks are going to generate carbon and what can you do differently? Identify carbon reduction activitiesFrom the work you are doing and the tasks identified, take a look at what extra actions you could to reduce the carbon impact. For example, are you planning to print a lot of leaflets or documentation? What could be delivered via a QR code or provided in digital format? What would still need to be created in paper format for a selection of users who would not be able to access digital content? What journeys are going to be undertaken on the project? Perhaps there are some workshops that can be held virtually and training delivered online instead of in a classroom. There are many advantages to getting together in person, but you might be able to identify some elements of the project that would work remotely. You can also look at the supply chain. Can you ask whether suppliers can deliver in a more sustainable way, such as with electric vehicles, or in recyclable packaging. What would that do to the budget, if anything? Add tasks to the planAdd your carbon reduction actions to your project plan. You might need to take specific actions, you might need to be more mindful of the way in which existing tasks are delivered. Make sure each action has an identified owner. Track and monitor progress towards your goalInclude carbon data in your reporting. If you are tracking according to your organisation’s metrics, then you might have some help from specialist teams who will know how best to report the data. Otherwise, add some narrative to your reporting to allow you to share your success with others. A lot of being smart with carbon on your project is just asking yourself the question: what can we do and are we doing things in the best possible way? Being aware of the challenges and helping others see that sustainability is a focus for you is key to keeping it on the agenda and making it part of the accepted ways of working. |
