People, Planet, Profits & Projects

You have probably concluded, while we are realists and pragmatic (project managers) we have also dedicated significant time to sustainability issues, perhaps to someone, might seem like it could be a little incongruous.  Au contraire, to us it is all about saving resources, whether those resources are people, planet, financial (profit) or any combination including all three.

Every once in a while, although it probably seems more like often, we come across projects that may be questionable in nature.  They may not be protecting one or all of the triple-bottom line.  George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  I found this on reference.com in response to the Santayana quote.  “Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it is an old but oh so true saying. The times and players may change but the game always remains the same.That is why we still tell stories like the boy who cried wolf and the three little pigs. (It is) To teach a lesson. Those who have been there and done that before us have given us a valuable blueprint of human behavior. If we ignore the history behind it and refuse to see and apply the lessons they teach, then we doom ourselves to the same fate that they suffered. Live and learn and pass your wisdom down to others to help make their paths a little easier.”

So let’s look at an ExxonMobil/Canadian oil giant Enbridge project.  We’ve all heard about tar sands oil.  According to the Oil Shale and Tar Sands Programmatic EIS Information Center , “tar sands (also referred to as oil sands) are a combination of clay, sand, water, and bitumen, a heavy black viscous oil. Tar sands can be mined and processed to extract the oil-rich bitumen, which is then refined into oil. The bitumen in tar sands cannot be pumped from the ground in its natural state; instead tar sand deposits are mined, usually using strip mining or open pit techniques, or the oil is extracted by underground heating with additional upgrading.”  It is highly toxic.  A conventional oil spill is an ecological nightmare, but a tar sands oil spill is even worse — more corrosive, highly toxic and much harder to clean up. [1] 

ExxonMobil and Enbridge want to pump that mixture through old oil pipelines from the 1950’s through a major watershed in Maine to reach Casco Bay so that the tar sands oil can then be exported.  As a matter of fact, the pipeline comes within 1000 feet of Sebago Lake, a lake so pristine that it supplies drinking water to the greater Portland (Maine) area without needing to be filtered. [2] A spill, like the one that that occurred two years ago in Michigan, spilling 1 million gallons of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River devastated the surrounding area.  The EPA is still trying to clean it up.[3]

So sometimes, a project just doesn’t seem like it is worth doing, especially if you have considered the environmental risks associated with the project.  However, we looked at the risk register that the team on the Macondo Well (Gulf of Mexico spill) and the only risk categories populated were in cost, schedule and productionsee www.boemre.gov/pdfs/maps/AppendixJ_RiskRegister.pdf.   So, if that is any indication of addressing environmental risks, Sebago Lake is in potential trouble.  And, to add to Mr. Santayana, let’s not only remember the past, but take our lessons learned and actually learn from them. "Live and learn and pass your wisdom down to others to help make their paths a little easier.”

[1] Lisa Song, "A Dilbit Primer: How It's Different from Conventional Oil," Inside Climate News, 26 June 2012.

[2] Portland Water District, Sebago Lake: State of the Lake 2012

[3] Elizabeth McGowan and Lisa Song, "The Dilbit Disaster: Inside the Biggest Oil Spill You've Never Heard Of," Inside Climate News, 26 June 2012.
 

"Aquaculture is probably the answer to the world's protein woes."

That is a quote from Wayne Miller, Chairman of the Board of Health in Barnstable, Massachusetts, and owner of a small trout farm on Cape Cod, MA.  It has certainly been said before, and is spawning an entire industry dedicated to providing the protein from farm raised fish, to replace or at best supplement the decline of natural fisheries.  That decline has roots in many areas; global climate change, reductions of wetlands (fish nurseries) due to over development, point source pollution of major fisheries, and just plain over fishing (or unregulated fishing). 

While they don’t try to compete with the “big boys”, like Blue Ridge Aquaculture in Virginia that raises nearly 4 million pounds of fish per year, or Clear Springs Trout Company in Idaho that produces over 22 million pounds of trout annually,  at best, Wayne and Barbara Miller produce about 8-10,000 pounds of trout destined for private ponds, fishing derbies, and science.  So their contribution is recreational and more importantly, to help scientists “solve the problem of disease in farm-raised fish and answer a host of other scientific questions about life on the fin”. 

Their clean water and low density of fish lend itself to a “pristine” fish that draws biologists to the farm.   Biologist Erin Bromage, from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth,  is a regular visitor to the farm taking fish for research.  “Everything is geared to increasing the currently thin margin of profitability from fish farming” says Bromage.   For more reading on the Miller’s farm, see, Big fish science in a small pond by Patrick Cassidy

As a glass have full type of person, I see the declining of our natural food sources from fish as a chance to; design projects that provide an alternative to feed people, to make some profit and to supplement our planets resources (The 4 Ps).  I also know that aquaculture is not without its detractors.   Especially with Atlantic Salmon farming, the overuse of antibiotics, the potential to introduces waste and diseases into the wild fish population, escaping fish competing with wild populations, etc., are all problems that need to be addressed through innovation and new projects.  And, there is always “Frankenfish”, a genetically altered salmon that may make it to our fish counters soon (unlabeled as such).  At this point, noone knows what the long term effects of eating a genetically altered salmon would be.  But I did hear   However, there are positive signs as noted above like the Miller’s farm.  We need to do something; otherwise, additional food shortages will exacerbate existing problems, especially with expected population growth over the next 30-40 years.

We want to give you one other perspective on genetically engineered foods.  "Risks exist everywhere in our food supply," points out Dean DellaPenna. "About a hundred people die each year from peanut allergies. With genetically engineered foods we minimize risks by doing rigorous testing."  Dean DellaPenna is a plant biochemist from Michigan State University.  To read more about his views, see this article in National Geographics.

Do you know the expression, "the elephant in the room"?

If you don't, as a project manager, it's an important one.  Read about it here.  It means "an obvious truth that is either being ignored or going unaddressed. It also applies to an obvious problem or risk no one wants to discuss."

Sound familiar?  In projects, one of our key jobs is to point this out. 

"Hey everyone", you need to say, "what about this key project threat?".  When you do this, you are pointing out an elephant in the room.

So, think about an elephant for a while.  Big, huh?  Huge, even.  Largest living terrestrial animals.  Nice.  A little odiferous, perhaps.  Anyone have any room deodorant or air freshener?

Now, imagine a bunch of them.  Say a hundred.  Or a thousand.  Wow, that's a lot of weight.  1,000 elephants would weigh about 4,000 tons. 

Now get ready for the mind-blower.  Imagine 95 billion elephants.  You can't do it.  It's incomprehensible.  Inconceivable.  Ninety-five billion elephants.

Yet, that's the weight of the ice being lost per year from Earth's poles.  This article, based on recent scientific data, shows that the amount of ice being lost is somewhere between 290 and 379 billion tons per year, up by a factor of three since the 1990s.

We all know that there are cyclic changes in weather.  And of course we need to be open to the possibility that this is cyclic.  But a tripling of this kind of weight in such a short time seems beyond the realm of siimple probability.

To us, it looks like an elephant in the room.  An obvious problem that people seem to continue to gloss over.  And by people, we of course mean project managers.  And those are some of the most influential people in the world, in terms of getting things done and being change agents.  That's what we do!  We find elephants in the room.  We execute projects, which make ideas real!  We are the ones that launch products which in turn are used in the steady state and consume resources, so we have a unique chance to affect those products-of-projects.

If you needed inspiration for your work as a project manager, you need only to imagine an elephant in the room.  Or 10, or 1,000, or a million, or a billion.  Or 95 billiion of them.

Remember this.  Elephants, after all, never forget!  Nor should project managers.

NOTE: We know this posting comes across with a strong message about climate change, and we know that not all project managers necessarily believe in it.  To those people we say two things:

1. Not a problem.  We urge you to check the science, but we have no issue with you if you don't believe in it.  We only have an issue if you deny our second point.

2. It's still important to integrate sustainabilty on your project because it still will help you (for one of many examples) identify threats and opportunities.

We've combined two stories we've recently encountered to share with you some ideas that we feel work their way back into the realm of project management. 

Be patient - we think it's worth it.

The first story- the one which lends us the name of our posting - covered a recent event at Duquesne University at which Cradle-to-Cradle author William McDonough and Green to Gold author Andrew Winston addressed attendees with talks on sustainability.

From the BBC article:

Architect and author William McDonough said that businesses need to shift their focus from just reducing emissions to optimising positive impacts such as material use.

Arguing that eco-designers have an important role to play in stimulating a more ethical business environment, he said companies needed to offer products that pose no risk to society and that become nourishment for something new at the end of their useful life.

Emphasizing that "less bad is still bad", McDonough questioned: "Why don't we start designing things so we understand what's going to happen next?"

There it is.  The design is key.  Using sustainability principles in the design is important.  As project managers, we often only get involved in the design if the project IS the design.  We are blogging and writing to promote the changes and a tenedency to think sustainably in both product/service design AND in projects where the design is "thrown over the wall" to a team meant to execute it into a steady-state product or service. 

In the case of design, we urge you to read books like Cradle to Cradle and Green to Gold but also to take advantage of software like that produced by Sustainable Minds and others.  You can see reviews of such software in this review by LinkCycle.

This takes us to the other story of interest, one about the Namib Desert Beetle.  This is the Namib Desert Beetle, by the way, very different than the delicious and tasty Namib Dessert Beetle, best enjoyed with strawberries, cognac reduction, and whipped cream.

In any case, this story - and others like it, discuss how designers are using biomimicry to inspire design of wanter extraction by taking advantage of the way this particular critter survives in the desert.

From the article:

NBD Nano (the company featured in this story) aims to mimic the way a beetle survives in an African desert to create a self-filling water bottle capable of storing up to three litres every hour.

The insect harvests moisture from the air by first getting it to condense on its back and then storing the water.

Using nature as an inspiration for technology, known as biomimicry, is increasingly widespread.

The company using the Namib Desert Beetle, NBD Nano, is using its name in their company identity.  Their mission statement:

NBD makes use of a nano-scale surface to enhance water condensation. Mimicking the Namib Desert Beetle, our nanotechnology can be used to collect water in the most arid regions of the world.

You may not be working in a company like this - what we at EarthPM would call a "green by definition" company.  But that doesn't mean you can't 'plant the bug' in the ear of your design team(s).  That doesn't mean your project cannot seek ideas like these in execution.

Doing this is not without rewards.  To return the the first story - the one taking place at the sustainability conference at Duquense University. At that conference, Procter & Gamble (P&G) was recognised with an award for its sustainability achievements.

P&G's associate director of global sustainability Jack McAneny accepted the award and spoke about the company's long-term commitment to using 100% renewable energy and making products and packaging entirely from recycled materials.

This translates into sales.

So we can see that putting effort into sustainable design is not only less bad, it's good!

My best friend saves Wall Street Journal Reports for me.  He is very disciplined and reads the Journal front to back every morning.  I’m not so disciplined or inclined.  While we share a profound love of fly fishing and the outdoors, he also knows that I am also interested in sustainability.   Thanks to him, I read a recent Journal Report focused on energy, or rather “Investing in Energy.”  This is the first of many blogs about energy and how it affects the triple bottom line (3BL).  They probably won’t be in any sequence as interesting blog subjects come across our desks daily.  We wish we had time to blog all the time, but alas, there are other things we need to do.  To find out more of what we are doing, take a look at our home site, www.earthpm.com.

Continuing with the thought in the first paragraph, while we were preparing this blog post we saw a brief note from T. Boone Pickens, Chairman of BP Capital Management, an energy-focused hedge fund, in the latest issue of Parade Magazine.   He makes the point that we can affect our national bottom line by reducing our impact on foreign oil.  That’s not too original of a thought, but he further makes the point on how to do it.  We should cultivate our own resources more.  Domestic oil is 15% less expensive that foreign oil, and our natural gas is 75% less expensive.  If we were to convert 8 million heavy trucks to natural gas, we could save 3 million barrels of oil per day.  We now get about 4.5 million barrels a day from OPEC, so, according to Mr. Pickens, we would reduce our need for foreign oil by 2/3rds.  Natural gas is not only cleaner than diesel, and, by increasing our production of natural gas, we would create jobs.  Job creation = more people paying taxes = more revenue to the government = debt reduction or at the least somewhere to get money, rather than printing it or borrowing it from foreign govenments.   Just a word of caution, we do need to make sure that we protect the environment when we call for the increase in use or extraction of any of our natural resources.  Back to the Journal. 

In an article by Yuliya Chernova, she highlights an interesting project to modify parking lots.  Now parking lots are notorious for causing pollution problems. Runoff from them tends to be a pollutant itself, lack of surface area to allow rainwater to percolate into the soil and additional heat generated by its surface are just a couple of ways in which a parking lot can be viewed in the negative.  However, there are some parking lot owners who have discovered that can “double up on their under-utilized property, and to offset their utility bills at the same time.”  Putting canopies over the parking spaces that contain solar panels does just that.  “One of the largest solar carports is now under construction at Rutgers University’s Livingston Campus in Piscataway, NJ.  Rutgers expects to save $28 million in electricity over 20 years.”  However, it must be understood that it is not just money that drives sustainability projects.  This project will cost about $41 million before federal and state tax incentives.  However, it reduce the surface area of the paved part of the parking lot, reducing the polluted runoff, and reduce the strain on the electric grid in the area.