People, Planet, Profits & Projects

If there's one place we hope to see increasing opportunity for Project Managers - especially PM opportunities in the area of sustainability, it's in PMI's own communications.

One of those which is most notable is PM Network magazine.  And in the current issue, threre are a couple of feature stories and sidebars of note which are right at that intersection.

And we'd like to draw your attention to them.

First, let's talk about Japan, using a statistic that we think will amaze you.

Japan has 50 nuclear power plants, which used to generate a third of Japan's energy.  Right now, two of them are operating.  That's right.  Two.

From the article:

"The government is pushing that radical shift in power with a new tariff that requires utilities to purchase renewable energy at fixed rates for 20 years. As hoped, those premium rates are prompting a surge in green energy projects.  The simultaneous meltdown of three nuclear reactors and the profound threat of radiation left a possibly indelible mark on the political consciousness with regards to energy infrastructure,” says Andrew DeWit, PhD, a professor in the School of Policy Studies at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan.  Less than three months after the tariffs took effect on 1
July, more than 33,000 renewables projects had received approval, according to Reuters.

Thirty-three thousand renewables projects, approved in just a few months.

To put this in monetary terms - which we should indeed do, Bloomberg New Energy
Finance predicted Japan’s investment in solar, wind and other forms of eco-friendly energy could jump to US$17.1 billion this year—nearly double the 2011 figure.

So that's one story.  But wait, there's more.

There's a sidebar about the effects of 'Superstorm Sandy' on metro New York City and the efforts to protect it from future storms.  From that article:

"City officials are reviewing a bevy of proposals for projects aimed at protecting against flooding from “superstorms,” such as October’s Hurricane Sandy. That storm knocked out power in New York for days, flooded streets and the public transit system, and killed more than 40 people in the city.  Most of the proposed projects focus on higher sea walls and more storm barriers, according to Fast Company. One early frontrunner is a project to install three moveable barriers under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that can close under threat of storm. The gates would, in theory,  protect large sections of the city and the neighboring state of New Jersey.

The hefty price tag— an estimated US$10 billion— scuttled the project when the idea was first floated eight years ago, but it is only one-fifth the estimated cost of cleaning up after the most recent disaster. "

And that's not all.  There's even more.

This one comres from the drought which has plagued the USA. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranked the drought among the nation’s six worst since the late 1800s.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimated that as of October, about 80 percent of U.S. agricultural land was affected.  This is the most severe and widespread drought in more than 50 years.

From this article:

The USDA and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are responding with US$5 million in grants for projects designed to help farmers and ranchers build resiliency into their production systems, leaving them better equipped to deal with future droughts.The grant program “provides a bridge between researchers and farmers,” says Wayne Honeycutt, PhD, deputy chief for science and technology at NRCS, Washington, DC, USA. “It connects proven research from universities to what landowners need.”

So, there are 3 articles from one issue of PM Network which tells a great story with which to end 2012 and look forward to a great 2013.  So we wish you all success and opportunity in 2013 and beyond.

Cheers!

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!