People, Planet, Profits & Projects

John S. Hoffman, an innovative US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official, died late last month.  We'd like to take a moment to point out some of his work and connect it to our discipline - project management.

In the US, Hoffman was responsible for Energy Star. 

One of his quotes really impressed us - he wrote this in 1992:

"profitably prevent pollution...using voluntary market enhancing programs"

Here's a little blurb about how that got started:

Legend has it that ENERGY STAR began 20 years ago after Hoffman conducted an informal walk-through of EPA offices. He wanted to see if employees remembered to turn off their computers when they left their workstations. He was not pleased with what he saw. He figured that if many of his staff members – who were well aware of the link between energy use and greenhouse gas emissions – forgot or found it too inconvenient to shut off their computers, the situation in the general population was far worse. He thought that a technical solution was needed – a way to automatically power down computers when not in use. And thus, a “star” (or at least a twinkle of a star) was born.

Source: http://ase.org/efficiencynews/memoriam-john-s-hoffman-father-energy-star

It worked - and continues to work.

This program, according to an editorial in today's Boston Globe has saved $230 billion in electrical bills and has avoided 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon emissions in the US alone.  Hoffman's goal - and this is strangely reminiscent of our own blog title - was to "profitably prevent pollution, including greenhouse gases, using volutary market enhancing programs".  His programs were instituted with no cost to consumers.

The connection we see to project management is multi-faceted.  First, the institution of these programs were projects in and of themselves.  Secondly, this shows what one change agent (and we, as PMs are nothing if not change agents) can do.  Thirdly, this shows how partnerships of government, industry, and consumers can be built to further a program objective.  We as project managers do this routinely for our projects.  We can learn from Mr. Hoffman's inspiring work, not only the focus on the environment, but the pure intelligence of consortium-building that he demonstrated.

20,000 organizations now participate in Energy Star programs.

These organizations have had a huge impact on people.

They have helped reduce the impact of energy-hungry devices on the planet.

They have helped companies save money and increase profit.

And they have launched many successful progrmas and projects.

So you see the connection and the reason we choose to pay tribute to Mr. Hoffman's legacy here.

Get more detail about this "warrior for the ages" (Boston Globe Editorial, today, 16-October-2012) at these sites:

Boston Globe, "Energy-saving guru"

Think Progress story

Have a look at the drawing above.  We'd like your opinion...we have been looking at a bunch of definitions of "project susccess", and serendipitously, this month's issue of PM Journal featured this topic.

One of the articles, "A perspective-based understanding of Project Success", covered the topic very well.

But we couldn't leave well-enough alone.

We think the authors did an outstanding job of capturing how we must, as a discipline, move from PROJECT to PRODUCT to ORGANIZATIONAL dimensions as we think about our work and our projects' successes.  But we think we, as project managers, have to think even further.  This is represented by the "breaking through" of the dotted line we show on the right of the diagram.

The intent is to show that even if we think beyond the project, and to the product in steady-state, and the portfolio of projects, and the organization, we still need to think in terms of the overall environment, and long-term effects of the product of the project.

We assert that this even-further-extended thinking will assist project teams in doing an even better job at identifying and handling environmental risks, amongst other things.

At this point, we just would like your opinion(s) about this visualization of thie issue.

What do you think?

Is it a success?

A wind turbine whirrs wistfully, whispering eagerly and urgently of its unbridled energy.  Sunlight glimmers off the sleek, shiny surface of a solar panel, as it emphatically sends surges of sustenance to energy-hungry inhabitants.  A shapely new red Croatian electric vehicle veers vivaciously by a vineyard.

These are the images we're presented with when the marketeers have their way in showing us what sustainability looks like and feels like.

It reminds us of air travel.  You don’t see (unless it’s depicting the ‘competition’) images of a paunchy, middle-aged man sitting in the middle seat, struggling to set up his laptop as the seat in front of him reclines fully, while a baby cries two seats ahead, and a rambunctious 2-year old is kicking the back of his seat, and… well you get the picture.

It’s not sexy.

What we see instead are happy people, relaxing with apparently unlimited legroom, headroom, in blissful relaxation as they are whisked promptly to their destination.  Which brings us back to our shapely Croatian model.

Our expectations in sustainability are set around the whirring wind turbine, the wave-action power generator, the biofuel facility, the winery that uses finches and bluebirds as a natural insecticide.

But as in air travel – it’s just not always that sexy.  Most of you frequent flyers will agree, it’s rarely that ideal.

Take the feature story in today’s Boston Globe.  Titled “A Basic Approach”, it’s the story of Ameresco, a local company which does its work in sustainability by retrofitting companies to be more efficient in their energy use without up-front cost via the financing of these improvements from the expected future savings.  It’s the ‘blocking and tackling’ of energy, as opposed to the quarterback, if you will allow us an American Football analogy. 

As an example, Ameresco has a US$21M project with the city of Lowell, Massachusetts, involving 47 buildings; this project is targeted to provide annual savings of $1.5M via upgraded equipment, weatherizing of buildings, new lighting, air conditioning, and boilers, and some solar installations.

Ameresco averages about 35% savings on their projects, so clearly they will pay back.  And their financial performance has reflected this success.

And so it is with project management's engagement with sustainbility.  As authors of PMI's Cleland Award-winning book, Green Project Management, our pubisher asked us to pick between two covers, one of which had sunflowers, wind turbines and shimmering solar panels.  We went for the other one - a picture of a tree yielding money.  We knew back then that it is indeed the blocking and tackling - the integration of sustainbility thinking into our discipline that will make the difference.  This is to take nothing away from shapely Croatian models - like the one we just blogged about.  These will also contribute, and may represent huge leaps forward.

But it's going to be the focus on efficiency, removal of waste from projects, connecting the enterprise's long-term vision to your project vision that moves us forward consistently.  And although it may not be as flashy, numbers like Ameresco is flashing, while not sexy, are at least...attractive, n'est pas?

We know.  We're at the intersection of sustainability and project management.   We think it's pretty cool but...would the general population give us cool points for being at this particular intersection?

I mean, really.  We get it.  No. Not at that intersection. Maybe we'd be cooler if we were standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona...

But today we'd like to share with you something that is at the corner of sustainability, projects, and very, very cool.  No, it's not on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.  It's more likely to be found at a corner in Croatia.  In particular, you will find it precisely at 10431 Sveta Nedelja, Croatia.

We're talking about the Concept_One car from Rimac Automobili.

It's for sale, according to several stories breaking this week.  And it's available for the low, low price of only $980,000.

What caught our attention was the drive (excuse the pun) of the designer (Mate Rimac), as well as the performance achieved by the design.

From the design perspective, it was developed over a two-year period after he converted his own BMW to an electric vehicle for racing.  As he continued replacing components from the BMW, he realized that he had almost nothing left of the original.  So he was pretty much starting from a blank piece of paper.

Rimac says that the company will be making 88 versions of the car but already had pre-orders from "the Abu Dhabi royal family". The car is now officially on sale after its latest outing, this time at the Top Marques event in Monaco. The first shipments are expected to be next year, and we wonder how many other royals will now be raiding their coffers.

As to performance, this EV is capable of 0-60 mph acceleration in just 2.8 seconds and top speeds of 190 mph. The world-beating performance figures, for an electric car at least, are courtesy of Rimac’s innovative quad-motor design, which has a combined output of 1,088 horsepower and 2,800 pound-feet of torque.

Rimac also boasts that 92kWh of energy can be stored in the Concept One’s liquid-cooled batteries, which is enough to carry the car a distance of 372 miles on a single charge.

Below is a little video that explains a bit about how it works....

We share the automotive press world with Rimac this week, not because we've released our own vehicle - no, as we said, we just don't have those cool points.  However, we did partner with EcoCar2, a great program to develop an electric car, sponsored in part by GM, Argonne National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy, and 15 university teams from all over North America.  Our organization will be providing PM coaching for these teams of students, who have 3 years each to impress the heck out of judges and win the competition for the best design of an electric vehicle based on a 2013 Chevy Malibu.

Our take on this: there are projects like the Rimac Concept_One, where everyone is focused on sustainability.  But a project manager is a change agent wherever he or she is working.  Think like Mate Rimac.  Maybe you can rework - and rewire - your project for sustaianbility, no matter what type of project it is.  At least consider it.

Rimac's press releases can be found here:

EarthPM's much less cool press release can be found here:

We found an interesting post over at one of our favorite websites: Earth Techling.

So the first finding from our post so far: go ahead and make a note to visit and subscribe to that site if you are at all interested in the interesection of technology and envrionment.

Now, on to their story.  It's about a series of electronics certifications for environmental responsibility, given by the Green Electronics Council, their tool, EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool), and a new designation which you may see alot of, called EcoSense - which we've featured at the top of *our* posting.

From the Earth Techling article:

EcoSense will be used to identify sustainable electronics from computers to TVs, printers to mobile devices and likely tablet PCs. And yes, it could be a very big deal.

EPEAT, which is managed by the non-profit Green Electronics Council, is probably the most comprehensive sustainability identifier you’ve never heard of. To be listed on the EPEAT registry, products must meet more than 50 different criteria, from energy efficiency to RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) compliance to ease of recycling. Computers listed on its registry must comply with 28 mandatory criteria, with 23 remaining optional. A Bronze designation denotes meeting the minimum 28 criteria, while a Silver product also meets 50 percent or more of optional criteria and a Gold-designated product meets 75 percent or more of the options.

Why is this important to project managers?  Well, we get involved in procurement, don't we?  And procurement has elements like constraints and contracts and guidelines.

From the article:

The (EPEAT) registry is used primarily by government agencies and large corporate purchasers to meet mandates for buying green computers. Some 95 percent of computers purchased by many U.S. government agencies, for example, must be EPEAT-certified. An estimated 100 million computers a year are sold based on the EPEAT designation.

So this is not at all trivial to business and not at all trivial to your project.

EPEAT’s criteria is based on IEEE 1680 standards, each of which can take a year or more to develop and finalize. O’Brien says it’s unclear whether tablets will be included under the mobile devices or the computer standard, the latter of which will undergo a revamp starting this fall.


Just to show that this is gaining traction, again from the article:

The EcoSense designation is currently being tested at an Office Depot store in Portland, Ore., and O’Brien says other partners like Staples would like to test the designation as well. EcoSense will be the consumer face of EPEAT, though whether EcoSense will have gold, silver or bronze designations remains to be seen.
From the EPEAT website:

EPEAT® is the definitive global registry for greener electronics. It’s an easy-to-use resource for purchasers, manufacturers, resellers and others wanting to find and promote environmentally preferable products.

Our vision: A world where the negative environmental and social impacts of electronics are continually reduced and electronic products are designed to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainability

Our mission: Operate the most successful global environmental rating system for electronic products, helping connect purchasers to environmentally preferable choices, and thereby benefiting producers who demonstrate environmental responsibility and innovation

Our values: Leadership, transparency, continuous improvement, collaboration and market-orientation
 

For the techies out there, here is an outline of the EPEAT criteria:

    Introduction
    Protocols 4.0 Manufacturer declaration
    Protocols 4.1 Reduction/elimination of environmentally sensitive materials
    Protocols 4.2 Materials selection
    Protocols 4.3 Design for end-of-life
    Protocols 4.4 Product longevity/life cycle extension
    Protocols 4.5 Energy convervation
    Protocols 4.6 End-of-life management
    Protocols 4.7 Corporate performance
    Protocols 4.8 Packaging
    Annex 1 Plastics materials form
    Annex 2 Packaging materials form
    Annex 3 Plug-in guidelines checklist

These protocols are all available as hyperlinks on the EPEAT site, provided below.

http://www.epeat.net/resources/criteria-verification/