People, Planet, Profits & Projects

As a project manager – or simply as a curious person, you may have been interested in the idea of sustainability – what it is, what it means, is it meaningful, and can we do anything about it.

In today’s Boston Globe, on the front page of their Ideas section, you’ll find an interesting article which is actually an interview with author Jeremy Caradonna on his book, Sustainability – a History.

You may have been interested in sustainability, but Caradonna has been fascinated by it.

The book is full of great background information on sustainability, for example, the skyrocketing use of the word over only the past 20 years or so.  Does that mean that our ancestors were not interested?  Does that mean that sustainability is only the proprietary use of the radical, left-wingers of the past, present or future?  Not at all.  The interview (and of course the book) is not your average history book.

In the interview background, we found this:

 Among his surprising discoveries is that many of sustainability’s forefathers were far from radical tree-huggers. They were, rather, aristocrats and colonialists—people hoping to profit from the land—who began to fear that the heedless plundering of natural resources could jeopardize the economy. The philosophy has since evolved in various directions; some now believe that social equity is a key part of a sustainable society. What the different offshoots share is respect for the planet’s limits—though debate will no doubt continue on the best ways to implement that principle.

We’ve made this point for a long time – and will “sustain” it.  We covered this in Green Project Management and we will continue this theme in Sustainability in Projects, Programs and Portfolios, our upcoming book to be published in 2015.  The point: although it somehow now seems to be natural now to connect sustainability with politics, with culture, with social status, that’s simply not the case, nor has it ever been.  Not only that, stamping sustainability with any other attributes or ‘brands’ besides concern for the long term is not productive for anyone.  And that includes Mr. and Ms. Project Manager.

See how Caradonna responds when he is asked if sustainability is a ‘radical’ concept:

I would not say that the sustainability movement and its origins were radical. I would say in many ways they’re critical. They’re critical of deforestation, later on they’re critical of unchecked economic growth and deregulation, and they’re critical of pollution and social inequality. But in many ways, it’s quite conventional. I mean, one of the things I’ve noticed is that some of the early advocates for what we could call sustainable living were aristocratic bureaucrats, or imperialistic bureaucrats who are stationed on islands in the West Indies or the East Indies. Or someone like Hans Carl von Carlowitz, who’s part of the Saxon Dynasty, he’s part of the monarchy there. None of these people, as far as I can tell, are interested in the natural world, in and of itself. None of them. They’re interested in natural resources because they have an impact on the economy and they have an impact on the human realm, in one way or another....Perhaps counterintuitively, the sustainability movement has roots in good old-fashioned economic and monarchical self-interest.

And as we’ve said, project managers are about preserving precious resources ourselves.  Granted, they may be the resources of our project, but if we can get ourselves to think a wee bit longer, the resources that the PRODUCT of our project will consume should also be of concern to us .  It’s a valid idea – and this is a book worth adding to your project management (or just your general) bookshelf.

This blog post is coming to you from Cape Cod, indeed almost exactly from the location of the first Thanksgiving.  And it's from this location that we wish our American colleagues the best of this holiday season!

And one of the most traditional parts of the traditional meal served on this very American holiday is cranberry sauce or cranberry relish.

 However, there is concern that the state’s popular native fruit may be affected by climate change. Scientific research indicates that heat stress, insecticides, rising sea levels and other factors will affect the harvesting of this little blood-colored fruit with the distinctively tangy taste.  Botanists have, in fact, been working on projects to develop new cranberry strains that they hope will be hardier.

These are green-by-definition projects, as described in our book, Green Project Management, which, in honor of the holiday, we are renaming Cranberry Project Management.

 An article on the front page of today’s Cape Cod Times newspaper highlights these projects, and the research projects which examine the impact of climate change on cranberries - one of only three native cultivated fruits in the United States. The others are blueberries and Concord grapes.

From the newspaper story:

 Especially in Massachusetts, “we have a special feeling, I guess you’d say, for the little fruit,” said Susan Playfair, author of the new book, “America’s Founding Fruit: The Cranberry in a New Environment.”

 Playfair, whose interest in climate change stemmed from sailing around New England in her youth, gathered The United States produced more than 8 million barrels of cranberries in 2012, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center.

 The cranberry is especially connected to Massachusetts, where it is the state fruit. Cranberry cultivation began on Cape Cod in 1812; Ocean Spray has its world headquarters in Middleboro. In the United data from bogs and researchers, reaching out to Boston University biologist Richard Primack. Along with Primack Lab researchers Elizabeth Ellwood and Caroline Polgar, they published the study “Cranberry flowering times and climate change in southern Massachusetts” last fall. The study found that cranberries flower roughly two days earlier for every 1 degree centigrade temperature increase, Primack explained.

 Complicating the temperature threat is a problem with pollination. A lot of pollinators are being killed by insecticides or fungicides, Primack said.

 “It’s a big problem with cranberries if they’re not getting pollinated enough, so often, their fruit yield is lower,” Primack said. “Growers are sometimes having to bring in honeybees to pollinate the crops. ... Temperatures are getting warmer, which is not so suitable for the bees.”

 Storms also are a problem, other cranberry experts say. As sea levels rise, storms have the “potential to move fertilizers off the farm in runoff, which is bad for the environment,” said Carolyn DeMoranville, director of the UMass Cranberry Station.

From a project management perspective, the issue is timeframe.  Currently there is a glut of cranberries.  So for the short term, it looks like everything is (excuse the pun) peachy.  But in the long term – thinking in terms of decades – temperature increases and sea-level rise also must be considerations and indeed have triggered the projects we’ve mentioned above.

Again from the article:

In a recent talk at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Playfair acknowledged that the effects of climate change on cranberries were long-term, not sudden. “I think what’s a little deceptive here is that we’re talking about something that’s gradually happening,” she said.

So our message to you: think long-term.  It may help in your current project and may be important to you in planning new projects.  Have a cranberry on us...right now, there's a surplus.  But it may not always be so.

As project managers, we are all about baselining.  That is – determining a reference point from which we make rational judgments.  We baseline scope.  We baseline schedule.  We baseline the budget.  We do this so that we can make informed decisions about the actuals – comparing actual to planned and looking for variance.  It's from this information that we make decisions - important project decisions.

In projects, this is done in the relatively short term.  Even though projects can be decades long, we must remember that in the scheme of things, a 50-year project is – geologically speaking – a flash in the pan, if that.  And that’s where the forams come in.

Forams?  That's not a typo - we didn't mean forum.  Although, there may be a forum for forams.

So - what’s a foram?  They are simple marsh-dwelling creatures – technically called foraminifera, which are choosy about how much time they spend underwater, and so they turn out to be surprisingly precise indicators of ancient sea levels.  Here's a picture of some...

In this article from today’s Boston Globe, you’d find the story of Professor Andrew Kemp of Tufts University, who is studying the ancient climate, “using lessons written in the sediment to discern historical patterns that could help refine models of climate change and sea levels. Generally, local sea level rise is calculated by taking the overall changes predicted by climate models and then factoring in the local conditions. But those are complex and aren’t all understood — a knowledge gap that research like Kemp’s could help fill.”

In other words, they are baselining.

The studies being conducted by Kemp have taken him from North Carolina to Long Island Sound, and now he would like to extend that work to Massachusetts, to build a fine-grained portrait of how sea levels have changed over the last several thousand years in order to make more informed predictions.

We found this story to be interesting in the dual connection to project management: first, the baseline element and second, the fact that it is indeed a project – one that our book Green Project Management would call a “Green By Definition” project.

And there was another, perhaps even stronger connection.

We’ve always treasured one particular aspect of project management – the fact that we are silo-busters.  Read this quote from the article:

‘The work shows the importance in science of borrowing tools and insights from other fields. While biologists might be interested in forams and the ecosystems in which they live for their own right, geologists can use the different species of forams they find and their distribution in the sediment to extrapolate the conditions of the ancient marsh.”

Even within the field of science – there are clearly silos.  And it’s this project team that is breaking down the walls between those silos to gain a positive outcome.  That’s what projects are all about.

And you can use that line… as a baseline.

Many of our PM colleagues don't buy the whole climate change "thing".

And that's actually fine with us.

We're not selling a philosophy, nor are we pushing any agenda, political or otherwise.  We have (for many years now) simply been asserting that there is a connection between project management and sustainability.  In our past book (Cleland Award-winning "Green Project Management") we made that connection between projects, project managers, and sustainability.  In our upcoming book, "Sustainability in Projects, Programs, and Portfolios", as you can probably guess, we've advanced that assertion to the program and portfolio level - partially because we know that business leaders - VPs and Directors - ARE buying sustainabiilty as a business imperative and are integrating sustainability into their business plans, and partially because we've found a much more receptive audience for sustainability and long-term thinking in project management at the program and portfolio levels.

This is illustrated in the latest issue of PM Network, which features a front page showing the Ivanpah solar installation in California and is titled, "The Energy Evolution" issue, there is a quote which illustrates this.

"Because of the 20- to 50-year lifespan of typical energy capital projects, investment decisions and resulting assets from these projects will impact the organization for decades to come", says Galen Townson, PMP, PMO lead at Synergy, an energy provider based in Perth, Australia.  "Not knowing what's going to happen in longer horizons creates a lot of risk in that investment, and the uncertainty is greater and it demands even more of a portfolio management approach". 

This quote shows us that Synergy - by necessity, is buying long-term thinking in their projects.

And that takes us to the numbers.

The numbers to which we send you is the "metrics" section of PM Network this month, which features some astounding figures.  For example:

• US$700 billion: Annual additional spending on clean energy infrastructure, low-carbon transport, energy efficiency and forestry projects need to cap the rise of global temperatures
• US$271 billion: Annual cost of climate change in the United States by 2025, including hurricane damage, real-estate losses and increased energy and water costs
• US$73 billion: Annual cost to climate-proof East Asia's infrastructure per through 2050
• 85% increase in teh number of undernourished people in southern Africa by 2050 - due to climate change
• and on, and on... see page 16 of the October, 2014 issue of PM Network for the full graphic

So this is PMI (not Greenpeace, not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not Al Gore) simply reporting on the numbers - the facts - that are out there, whatever your beliefs are about the science.

We're depressed by some of the numbers (like the sea level rise numbers, comparing .62 feet between 190 and 2010 verus a projected 2 to 4.6 feet from 2000 to 2100, or the projected global tempurature increases of up to nearly 10 degrees F), but we are glad to see that at least the amount of investment that business and government is committing is present and public in a journal like PM Network.

So we hope that you are "buying' at least the concept that projects focused on sustainability are on the rise - and that you can also make the connection to the concept that projects (at all levels, and whether or not they are related to climate change) should be integrating sustainability, holistic, long-term thinking, if for no other reason than to tether them more firmly to the mission and vision statements of the enterprise.

The altruism is there but often silent.

The numbers - well, they're a little louder.

Are you buying?

As project managers we are often faced with tough descisions.

So it's a relief, isn't it, when you stop off at the market on the way home from a long day of progressive elaboration and rolling-wave planning, Monte-Carloing, Paretoing, and determining the Estimate at Completion, that the only decision you have to make is.... Paper or Plastic for your bag.

What a relief.  An easy, no-brainer.  Paper!  Right?  It's brown, it's re-used materials... right?  Right?  RIGHT?

Not necessarily.

We think there is actually quite a lessons-learned in the area of Procurement Management for your projects in the video we provide below.

The speaker,  Leyla Acaroglu is outstanding as she provides a flowing, logical description of how purchasing decisions should really be made.  She's speaking in general, but if you have your "PM antennae" on, and you're willling to think a little more holistically about your project - including the time after the moment you leave the project because it's turned over to your client - you'll find that this talk can help you in your PM decision making.

You're going to find definitions in this talk which will be helpful as well.

• extraction
• biodegradability
• Life Cycle Assessment (or Analyisis) - LCA

This is a highly-recommended talk.  You will be that much smarter after listening.