People, Planet, Profits & Projects

Do me a favor.  Read this brief paragraph (below in yellow highlighting) and then stop and take a deep, deep breath.  A breath of probably much cleaner air than many, many other people are taking.

The World Health Organization (WHO) compiled a list of the 1600 cities with the worst air quality in the world.  India as a whole is home to 11 of the top 20 cities on the planet with the worst air quality.  The worst U.S. city was Fresno, California, which came 162nd on the list.

 (Compiled by the World Health Organization, which collected pollution levels from these cities between 2008 to 2013.)

Most of us have come to associate “poor air quality” with Beijing.  It is indeed bad there.  But New Delhi (for example) is much worse.  The worst US city is number 162 on the list of 1600 metro areas and India has 11 of the top 20?  Wow!

NPR just published an excellent article about this topic, and another quite striking fact is this: President Obama, who visited New Delhi for 3 days recently, is estimated to have lost 6 hours off of his lifespan based only on breathing the air from New Delhi on the visit.  Wow again!

The problem of air pollution is the immediate, visible outcome of unsustainable growth.  The real problem is actually much more insidious.  Quoting from the article:

The impacts of climate change would hit people in India harder than almost anywhere else in the world, making it more vulnerable to flooding and drought. "Tropical cyclones are likely to become more intense. We're also seeing that climate change is going to have an impact on the monsoon," says Richard Hewston of the global risk assessment firm Verisk Maplecroft.

His company looked at which countries around the world are most vulnerable to storms, flooding and other acts of nature. India is already at the top of the list, first in the world. Two of its biggest cities, New Delhi and Kolkata, with a combined population of more than 14 million, are on the top 10 list of global cities most vulnerable to natural hazards.

What’s happening in India is important – even critical – not just for India, but for the world.   What India is able to accomplish in terms of new projects to promote and develop clean energy and to limit climate change will say a lot about what the rest of the world can do.  They have set high targets in these areas, and in many ways will lead the world in implementing sustainable development en masse.  Again, quoting from the article:

In the filtered, cooled air of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, Ambassador Richard Verma tells me he thinks India is poised to take the lead on clean energy and climate change. Already, it has set an ambitious target of 100 gigawatts of solar energy by 2022, which would be a faster buildup than any country has managed.

“There’s no other country on the planet that has set the kind of renewable targets and goals that India has. So I think the way to get there is a challenge, but India, I think, is really going to be a trailblazer in this whole area,” he says.

The challenge for India is how to manage the tension between development and climate change. What happens next here could have a huge impact on the world and has the potential to write a new story on how developing countries enter the 21^st century — including whether the world can alter the course on climate change or not.

It’s worth having a look at some of these goals and objectives.  Click here for a 30-ish page report which summarizes them.

Why is this covered in a project management blog?  A few reasons.  First, we can see some of the effects of climate change – or at least air pollution – on a population.  We can see that a government appears to be taking the threat seriously and is responding to the threat with a detailed, significant plan that launches all sorts of projects and programs.  If nothing else, these will employ thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of project managers, to turn these ideas into reality.  Agree or not with the concept of climate change, whether to you it is fiction or reality is actually of no import.  What you can read from this is that there will be real project work for real project managers.  We’d assert that this is good, just work that must be done.

So the topic is wider than you may think.  It has - for lack of a better expression- deep breadth.

For a recent news story on this topic, click here.

Photo Credit: Gajendar Nadav, Financial Express

Photo Credit: Zambia Daily Mail (https://www.daily-mail.co.zm/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/maize-crop-shed.jpg)

We posted in April about food waste.  Most of that conversation was about initiatives at the consumer level.  Remember? It was about throwing away one slice of pizza when you have three on the plate?  One third of food served to customers or prepared by ourselves is lost.  In fact, in 2015, in the USA alone, 130 billion pounds of food was simply “thrown away” – ending up in landfills and causing other problems, including greenhouse gasses and disease.

Turns out, that’s not the only place where there is food ‘loss’.  We don’t always think about this as modern consumers, but there is a significant amount of food waste as “post-harvest loss” (described below).  PM Network, PMI’s monthly magazine, features this in their excellent section, “The Edge”, with a story entitled “Fixing the Food Chain”.

What’s a story like this doing in PM Network?  We’re not farmers, or agriculturalists, nor are we (necessarily) economists!  We’re project managers.  And aside from the fact that this is an important story that effects us as humans, another reason a story like this makes sense in PM Network is that it discusses a seven-year, $130 million project called YieldWise.  As project managers, projects like this are – if nothing else – job and growth opportunities.  We see them as much more – we see them as ‘green by definition’ projects.    This initiative is about Post-Harvest Loss – the spoiling of food that could have been consumed by people.  We encourage you to visit the site.  But start off with this very short video (you can play it in-place below) about the problem that the project is out to solve.

The project will research and implement new ways to store, process, and transport produce to the changing markets of the region. 

This particular effort takes place in Sub-Saharan Africa.  But efforts like this are worldwide, and projects like YieldWise give project managers a chance to practice their profession and contribute to the planet’s health at the same time.

Champions 12.3 is another effort, consisting of a family of projects aimed at meeting a UN target. From their website:

At the 2015 United Nations General Assembly, countries of the world formally adopted a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the Post-2015 Development Agenda. SDG 12 seeks to “ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.” The third target under this goal (Target 12.3) calls for cutting in half per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer level, and reducing food losses along production and supply chains (including post-harvest losses) by 2030.

To help convert Target 12.3 into reality, the global multi-stakeholder summit “No More Food to Waste” proposed the idea of developing a group of executives who would champion the cause of achieving SDG Target 12.3 or Champions 12.3. During the United Nations General Assembly’s Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, the government of The Netherlands formally called for its formation.

For those interested in these important and interesting projects, we provide the following resources as well:

Link to Youtube video on post harvest waste

Food Waste - Training effort in Tanzania

Drones and sub-surface irrigation in India

Good article from The Guardian on Post Harvest Loss

2011 WorldBank report on Sub-Saharan Post Harvest Loss

An FAO (Food and Agriculture Office of the UN) report on both food waste and post harvest loss.

Outstanding infographic on food waste and post harvest loss.

Key Twitter hashtag for post-harvest loss:

#preventphl

Photo Credit: Gallo Images/Thinkstock

There’s a little bit of ‘karma’ associated with this blog post.  I sat down to write the post – a post ostensibly to be (only) focused on E. O. Wilson’s, book Half Earth (and I will indeed cover that book a little bit).

I had just reached the point where I had the piece outlined, and I went into the neighboring room where I could hear (from the TV) the voice of Peter Coyote narrating a documentary.

I sat down with the rest of the family, who had settled in to watch the program.  The show was Ken Burns’ excellent documentary, National Parks: America’s Best Idea, being rebroadcast by PBS – it first aired in 2009. Parks, as described by PBS, is “a six-episode series produced by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan and written by Dayton Duncan. Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska.  In this series, Burns, aided by the talented voices of such celebrities as Adam Arkin, Tom Bodett, Andy Garcia, Tom Hanks, Derek Jacobi, John Lithgow, Amy Madigan, Sam Waterston, and George Takei.

The lengthy series covers the history and implementation of 58 US wilderness national parks, featuring some of the most beautiful photography and editing you have ever seen.  And yes, because creating these parks required the cooperation of key sponsors and the participation (sometimes forceful) of many types of stakeholders, there are lots of project lessons simply in that aspect of the show.  In fact, the subtitle of the show, “America’s Best Idea” aligns with our assertions that project management is about bringing ideas to reality and that is what happened in these 58 parks.

So where’s the karma?  It is in the connection of (1) the National Park theme, which is one of stopping development and carving out space for nature - - and (2) the theme of Wilson’s book.  So now on to E. O. Wilson and his book, Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.

E. O. Wilson is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a professor emeritus from Harvard University.

In his book, Half Earth, Wilson says, well – I think I’ll let him speak for himself, via this snippet from a recent New York Times interview:

Reading your book, one senses you felt a great urgency to write it?

The urgency was twofold. First, it’s only been within the last decade that a full picture of the crisis in biodiversity has emerged. The second factor was my age. I’m 86. I had a mild stroke a couple of years ago. I thought, “Say this now or never.”

And what I say is that to save biodiversity, we need to set aside about half the earth’s surface as a natural reserve. I’m not suggesting we have one hemisphere for humans and the other for the rest of life. I’m talking about allocating up to one half of the surface of the land and the sea as a preserve for remaining flora and fauna.

It’s a huge, controversial, sweeping proposal. And we suggest you read it, even if you’re highly cynical of the idea. 

Both the book and the concept of the national park have to do with long-term thinking.  Drastic steps such as preserving vast areas of land for the future are not taken by those who are looking to the next quarter’s profits.  They are ‘generational’ in nature (excuse the pun) and take a view that is about benefits realization to the extreme.  Thinking like this is Portfolio Management on steroids.  And that’s a good thing. Moreover, this is the type of thinking we are trying to encourage our project management audience to consider.  It does not mean that you have exactly this same attitude on each project – in fact, there are many cases where this thinking just does not apply.  But there are many (surprising) cases where it does apply.  We, of course, would send you to our two books (Green Project Management and Driving Project, Program, and Portfolio Success) to see some of these in action.

References:

National Parks: Americas Best Idea – A series by Ken Burns, written by Dayton Duncan, broadcast on the Public Broadcasting System of the United States (PBS)

Half Earth: Our Planet’s Fight For Life - a book by E. O. Wilson

https://nature.berkeley.edu/breakthroughs/sp15/eo-wilson-on-saving-half-the-earth

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/science-nature/can-world-really-set-aside-half-planet-wildlife-180952379/

NOTE: This post is not an endorsement of any political candidate!  If anything, it is an endorsement of project management and project managers.

 “I will build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I’ll build them very inexpensively.  I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will make Mexico pay for that wall, mark my words.”

- Donald Trump, candidate for President of the United States

This post is indeed about walls.  But instead of border walls, it’s about sea walls.  Why sea walls?  Well, they’re an instrumental part of several huge, huge, great projects (to paraphrase Mr. Trump) which will engage many of our peer project managers, whatever their politics.

An article in The Edge, from the April 2016 issue of PM Network, says, “a growing number of organizations are now launching projects to generate power from the ocean.  Many of these projects are based in the UK, but they are also going to take place elsewhere, particularly in North America and in China. 

Projections (see chart, imagined from data in the article), take the investment from $25M in 2013 to over $10B in 2020.

 That’s quite a ‘wave’ of investment, and spells lots of opportunities for project managers.  Key to this demand is the predictability of the tides, as contrasted to the uncertainty and variation in solar and wind power – forcing them to rely on effective storage of power (another area of research and project management!). 

Here’s an example: In Swansea, Wales, there is a $1.5B tidal lagoon project which is set to generate power for 150,000 homes for over a century.  This project includes the creation of large (great, great!) sea walls.

Here’s another one: in China, there is a $30B proposed tidal wall, using special curved blades to help limit damage to sea life, which will be built by a consortium of eight Dutch companies.  In China, this is illustrative of the gigantic increase in renewable energy spending.  China is leading the way here with $110B invested in 2015 alone, and the US in second place at $56B.

Here is an excellent video (just 3 minutes) showing the technology behind the tidal project to be built off the coast of China.

Of course, China has some history building great, Great Walls…

In any case - these green-by-definition projects present great opportunities for project managers who have learned about the importance of sustainability in projects, and in project, program, and portfolio management.

Let me begin this post with a story from my own engineering work from long, long, ago.

I was a test engineer in a department that specialized in testing and troubleshooting the difficult, “dog” circuit boards that failed manufacturing test (yes, manufacturing, in the United States.  I told you it was long, long ago!).  These were telecom circuit boards with complex designs, featuring analog to digital conversions, signal processing, and usually containing hundreds of integrated circuits (chips).  When they passed test – fine.  When they failed, usually the sophisticated automated test sets, or technicians equipped with data analyzers and oscilloscopes could trace the problem.  But there always a few outliers that were hard to troubleshoot – the dogs.  And it was expensive inventory to have these hanging around – and although junking them was an option, if there was a way to find the problem, not only did it make one more product available, it also gave the designers and test engineers useful information for redesigning the product or the process.

So I went on a hunt for a way to solve these ‘animals’.  And I ended up using a solution called thermal imaging to get a thermal signature of a good circuit board and to compare it to a 'dog'.  Often, this led to finding very interesting flaws, such as capacitors with slightly leaky dielectrics, or ‘soft short circuits” between layers on multilayer circuit boards.  Thermal imaging worked very well on the 'dogs'.

I was always impressed with the system’s ability to show fractions of a degree centigrade in different colors.  In fact, when I demonstrated this to other engineers in the company one day, in a large auditorium, after setting up the infrared camera in the back of the room, I noticed two bright hot spots on the carpet in the center of the room.  I mean, these were bright red-orange flare-ups on the carpet, near the viewgraph machine (yes, it was that long ago!).  I wondered if there was some kind of heating system between floors, or a mouse under the carpet – I had no idea. 

Turns out: these two spots were the signature of my own knees.  I had been setting up the viewgraph machine (once again, this was long ago!) in the center of the room, and my kneeling down for a few moments on the carpet was enough to leave those “hot spots” on the carpet.  So that’s some background – thermal imaging, even back then, was pretty (excuse the pun) cool.  See figure below, showing the thermal image of a circuit board.

In those days, the thermal cameras actually needed liquid nitrogen (to have a known reference temperature to work with).  And the cameras and associated electronics were a bit large and unwieldy.

Flash forward to 2016.  Today I ran across this article (and associated broadcast snippet) from NPR’s outstanding blog called “Goats and Soda”, about applying this technology also to find “dogs” but in this case, human “animals” who in turn are poaching protected species around the world.  The solution uses the same sort of thermal differentiation available in these cameras to identify human body heat – in this case the body heat of poachers – catching them in the act of killing (for example) elephants rhino, certain gazelles, and impala.

If you are interested in these green-by-definition projects, check out these other articles which also include the application of drones carrying these cameras.  Check out this article from NBC News, and this one from The Observer, and this one from Popular Science - of particular interest to project managers because of its radical scope change that occurred midstream.

Your animal instincts know that project management and sustainability are intertwined.  This is just some more proof.