People, Planet, Profits & Projects

For some of us, the holiday season, by nature (excuse the pun), is about green.  Not Kermit green, but evergreens and “mistletoe and holly” to quote a Christmas Carol.  But it could go either way, sustainable or not, and if it goes not, it goes in a big way.  Americans toss out an extra 25 million tons of trash over the holidays, largely due to packaging.  I remember when I was young and it was all about the present count.  Each present was gaily wrapped by one of Santa’s elves and mysteriously appeared in the on Christmas morning under the tree.  The tree miraculously appeared with ornaments and lights just in time when my question of “Has Santa come?” was answered in the affirmative, usually in the wee hours of Christmas morning.  Funny I never heard the sleigh.  By the time all the presents were unwrapped; there was an enormous pile of colored paper.  What to do with it?  Usually, it went into gigantic black plastic “contractor’s” bags to be placed on the curb with all of our neighbors black plastic bags.  I’ll bet some of that wrapping is still in a landfill somewhere.  After all, there is virtually no degradation taking place in a landfill.  Besides, the waste in landfills, the remnants of the wrapping paper can be a fire hazard.  People almost burn their houses down by throwing too much of the paper in their fireplaces.  Have you ever seen how that stuff burns?

And then there is that Christmas tree with all the lights and ornaments.  When the lights went bad, they were thrown away, but the ornaments, now that was a different story.  A lot of them are handed down from generation to generation to be unboxed and hung on the tree from year to year, reuse!  At one time the trees were collected and used to fuel a huge bonfire to signal the end of the holiday season and to warm us while we watched.  One of the best uses of discarded Christmas trees we’ve seen is that they are collected and ground up for mulch to be used in the spring on minicipal lands or made available to citizens for their gardens.   Christmas trees are certainly a renewable, recyclable resource, just ask the Virginia Christmas Tree Growers Association http://www.virginiachristmastrees.org/facts.asp. 

There are now alternatives to the traditional non-recyclable wrapping paper.  Have a contest to see who can come up with the most sustainable wrap.  It is amazing what people will come up with, especially if there is an incentive involved, like some homemade cookies for the winner.   If you do buy paper, make sure it has the Sustainable Forest Initiative symbol.  And, then do what my mother used to do, carefully unwrap the present to preserve the paper for another gift.  Reuse again.   Have another contest to see who can come up with the cleverest idea for ribbons and bows or other packaging decorations.  Gift bags are also to be considered as they can be used again and again.   Food as a package decoration is great, as long as it isn’t something perishable.  Candy makes great decorations, especially the Christmas candies like candy canes and ribbons, very colorful. 

I have a friend who sends a very simple Christmas card, but he hand ties a fishing fly that is included.  Each year is a different fly.  A hand tied fishing fly would be a great decoration for a simple package (just watch the hook).  There are a lot more things to green up your holiday season.  Just look on the Internet; LED lights for the tree to reduce energy usage, solar lights for the outside (a disappointment for Clark Griswold) to reduce energy usage to 0, and more.  Not only is it fun to create ways to be more sustainable, but the results could drastically reduce that holiday waste.  Now, if I could just do something about my holiday waist-line to keep myself more sustainable.

Two strongly-related news stories caught our attention today.

One (from Politico.com) describes the closing of COP17, the UN Climate Conference which completed last week in Durban, South Africa.

The other, (from today's Boston Globe) using that as an opening, is a story about how technology is really the answer and that (as Gomer Pyle used to say: "surprise, surprise, surprise") the diplomats and governments are just not that good at solving problems.

Wherever you stand on climate change (and we're interested to hear just where that is), we hope you'll agree that the field of green technology holds promise for us - as project managers.  Indeed, to quote Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University, the "efforts to develop these new technologies need to accelerate to full throttle". 

That means development projects:

• research
• design/innovation
• testing
• trials

That means deployment projects:

• design/implementation
• construction
• training
• conversion

In other words, jobs for us as PMs.

So - sharpen your tools.  Build your 'green vocabulary' and get out there and do what the diplomats and policy makers continue to NOT do, and that's to make a difference.

One way to do that is to check out the job opportunites here on GreenBiz.  Note how many of them are driven by new projects.  That's all we're sayin'.

In 1986, when Jay Westervelt, a New York environmentalist, coined the word “greenwashing”, it was in an essay assailing the hotel industry for its attempt to use an environmental cause to reduce its costs, rather than an effort to reduce energy usage.  Today, the term applies to any company who uses the consideration of the environment as an advertising tool rather than a concerted effort to reduce their environmental footprint.

During a recent holiday, my wife and I decided instead of driving a long distance, or flying to a location to be with family, that we would have a “stay-cation” and use our lowest emission, fuel efficient vehicle to drive the 40 miles to Boston and spend a few days in the city.  We were able to park our car and then use “pedi-power” for our stay.  Boston is a foot-friendly city and even though we stayed across the river in Cambridge, we were able to walk everywhere we wanted to go. 

Some small businesses choose to take on sustainability projects.  We had made reservations at a small restaurant in Beacon Hill for the holiday dinner.  At the time we made the reservations I had no idea how “green” the restaurant is.  At our table was a card printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper, FSC Certified.   The front of the card read “Green Thursdays, Come and celebrate our planet with your friends and neighbors.”  They offered “organic martinis, specials from renewable and sustainable foods, and recycling tips.” 

But the back of the card were the most poignant messages.  It had two boxes, “Did you know…?” which is the commitment the restaurant makes, and “How can you help?” which is self-explanatory.  The “Did you know” box contained things like; recycling of just about everything, including catalogs, cardboard, computer printouts, cell phones, metals.  It also included composting of food wastes, environmentally friendly cleaning products, energy efficient equipment (programmable timers and thermostats, motion sensing lights, low energy lighting, recycling waste oils, seasonal herb garden, two-way totes for delivery of merchandise, educating staff and the public on sustainable practices, and more.

The “How can I help?” box included advice to install low-flow shower heads to reduce  water use by as much as 50%,  and by turning off the water when you brush your teeth could save as much as 9 gallons of water each time.  It also included some facts like 40% of the energy used in your home is for heat, 1 ton of non-recycled newsprint uses 12 trees, Americans discard 4 million tons of office paper every year – enough to build a twelve-foot high wall of paper from NY to California, and glass never wears out-it can be recycled forever. What isn’t said here is important as well.  How much does this effort make “cents”?  Let’s just look at lighting.  Here’s a little table I took from one of my student team presentations:

That is a very short pay-back period and significant savings!  75 Chestnut, Beacon Hill, is an example of a small company doing what they can to execute sustainable projects.  That is certainly not “greenwashing.”  Besides that, the atmosphere and food were excellent. 

In this somewhat toungue-in-cheek, somewhat serious post, we address the sustainability role of the project manager by illustrating this with a football statdium.

In particular, we want to draw your attention to the Dallas Cowboys.  After all, this is Thanksgiving season in the US, a holiday celebrated here with a family meal, acknowledging what we're thankful for, and watching lots of football.  In particular, this Thanksgiving, the Dallas Cowboys played the Miami Dolphins (the Cowboys won by one point). In fact, Dallas plays every Thanksgiving in their beautiful new stadium, a finalist in the 2010 PMI Project of the Year Award.

The stadium deserved its Finalist position - the project team did a great job and this post is not meant to be any sort of direct attack on that project.  However we will take a couple of good-natured pokes at it based on some news stories.

First: some context.  It's our assertion that project managers are responsible not only for the execution of the project and its end deliverable, but the handoff of that project to the steady-state.  And we think project managers should have more of a role in assuring that the steady-state, or the "sustained" operation, is successful for the ongoing users of the project's product.

In the case of this stadium, two flaws have shown themselves in terms of steady-state operation.

1. The gigantic TV monitor has actually interfered with play.  See this story. See this story.

2. Premium seating for high-paying patrons has ended up in obstructed views. See this story.

So what could the project manager and team have done?  Did they fully take into account the steady-state operation of the stadium?  Is it really their responsibility?

We're just asking the questions.  We're just raising awareness about this.  Perhaps this is example is extreme, but we want this conversation to take place.  We want this post to be a way to point out that sustainability often has nothing to do with ecology but rather with the general "steady-state".

Not literally, but we were recently reading an article on build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT).  It sounds a lot like life cycle assessment (LCA) if you ask us.  So the premise of BOOT, to put it in a project management context, is to initiate, plan and execute a project (build), turn it over to internal operations (own/operate) for a specified amount of time and then reassign (transfer) the project’s operational responsibilities to a third-party.  That reassignment may be a permanent solution, via a sale, or it may be a lease arrangement.  As an example, let’s look at the Memorial Bridge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 

The truss/lift bridge took about three years to construct, between 1920 and 1923.  The build was a joint venture with Maine, New Hampshire and the federal government.  The own/operate was the responsibility of the States of Maine and New Hampshire.  After 88 years of operations, and numerous attempts at trying to procure funding for refurbishing the bridge, it was decided in July of 2011 to permanently close the bridge to vehicular traffic.  With the decision made to replace the bridge, the process of transfer has begun.  The thought is to offer the bridge for a nominal fee if the company winning the bid agrees to remove it at their own cost and have a plan approved to reuse the bridge, thus completing the BOOT process.

Because we are in the business of sustainability, we are going to define LCA in the context of the environmental standard, ISO 14040.   First, however, we’d like to share a little about the fundamentals of LCA.  It is a technique for assessing the aspects and potential impacts associated with a product.  The steps are as follows: compile an inventory of relevant inputs and outputs of the product, evaluate potential environmental impacts associated with those inputs and outputs, interpret the results of the inventory and potential impacts throughout the product’s life cycle (i.e. cradle to grave) from build (raw material acquisition, construction) through own/operate (use), to transfer (disposal).  To put further perspective on it, categories of environmental impact include; resource usage, human health and ecological considerations.

ISO 14040:2006 are the guiding principles and framework for LCA.  It includes the following phases:

• Goal definition and Scope
• Inventory Analysis
• Impact Assessment
• Interpretation
• Reporting and Critical Review

For a detailed look see http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/lcaccess/ or Chapter 9 of our book Green Project Management.

We believe that there is a direct correlation between BOOT and LCA.  The BOOT process, in the project management context, looks at the project over its lifecycle from the design/build/operate stage to the transfer stage.  LCA looks at a project from the charter/planning/execution phase through the closure stage and on to the disposal stage.  Although to some it may seem a stretch, it seems to us that both of these applications, when applied to the project management environment, are almost identical.  We know that some may feel that the BOOT process is only applied very narrowly and it doesn’t relate to project management.  It is important for the project manager to reach outside their box and use whatever tools and techniques are available.  BOOT and LCA, are just those types of techniques that get us thinking about what happens to our projects after we the traditional project management functions are complete.  It is our thinking that these techniques provide us with the unique opportunity to expand our role and that’s where we think the future of project management should go.