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

Ocean acidity may conjure up a scene from the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy throws a bucket of water towards the burning scarecrow and accidently hits the witch, “I’m melting, I’m melting.”  But ocean acidity is much more subtle than that.  A recent article in the Washington Post on-line headline “Ocean Acidification Emerges as New Climate Threat”, Juliet Eiperin from the post talks with Kris Holderied, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Kasitsna Bay Laboratory, Alaska about the issue.

NOAA’s major concern is with the threat to U.S. fisheries in the region (The North West and Alaska) due to “human-generated carbon emissions” making the ocean’s waters more acidic.  According to article, the oceans absorb about 30% of the carbon dioxide we put in the air.  Presently, the sea is 30% more acidic that before the industrial revolution, and it is predicted that at the current rate of global carbon emissions, the oceans acidity could “double by 2100.”  In other words, pH levels are dropping.  The falling pH levels could affect the nervous systems of some species of fish making them more vulnerable to predation, and inhibit the growth of reefs, important nurseries.  Some areas are more vulnerable than others.  For instance, along the Pacific shelf, deeper water comes up and spills over the shelf.  Increasing acidity levels in this water.  That increased acidity is killing oyster larvae farmers are growing.  Oyster farmers off the coasts of Washington and Oregon recognized this potential issue early and were able to institute projects to to time their intakes of water to reduce the results from this upwelling.   As a result, and if we look at the cost-benefit for this project, “a $500,000 investment in pH monitoring equipment, saved the oyster industry $34 million in one year (2011).”  That’s a ratio we can certainly live with.

The domino effect of these issues is sometimes not so obvious.  But in this case, the spat (the term for the oyster larvae) are used by oyster farmers as far away as Homer, Alaska.  A loss of those spats has industry wide ramification. 

Another project spawned (excuse the pun) from the research is the placing of 4 pH monitoring buoys throughout the state of Alaska to study the pH along the Alaskan shoreline.  However, it is a fair-and-balanced study.  Scientists are also studying the effect of lower pH on surf smelt, a species particularly suited to thrive in lower pH environment, and the Dungeness crab that does not do well in low pH.  The Commonwealth of Virginia has funded a project for six shellfish hatcheries to monitor the water chemistry of the Chesapeake Bay to study the effects of fertilizer runoff, another potential for contributing to water acidity.

But we think that this statement brings it home, not only to business, but to the microcosm of business we call project management:  “When you ask why does ocean acidification matters, often we’re interested because of the fish we eat and the things we make money off of,” said Shallin Busch, a research ecologist at the NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Washington.

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 recent article on GreenBiz caught our eye for as couple of reasons.  We’ve always been advocates of Ray Anderson, founder of Interface Global, the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial carpeting.  Because the carpeting manufacturing business is so fossil fuel intense, we were particularly impressed with Ray’s efforts to reach 100% sustainability by 2020 by climbing “Mount Sustainability” for “Mission Zero” and included his company in our book as one of those who were “At the Top of Their Game.”  While Ray has passed on, his legacy is very much alive.  To hear more about Ray Anderson and his philosophy click here.

The article in GreenBiz is about Interface sharing some pointers on how they are achieving sustainability.  Being fishermen, what caught our eye was their partnership the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) to address a major problem we’ve seen firsthand, the abundance of discarded fishing nets and nets affect on the oceans fish and wildlife.  A couple of years ago, one of EarthPM founders was instrumental in the rescue of an injured Harp Seal that washed up on a beach in southern Maine.  The conclusion by the fish and wildlife biologist involved in the rescue was that the seal had been caught in nylon net around its mouth and while it was now free of the net, the fabric caused some abrasions around the seal's mouth casuing an infection.  The seal was taken to the Mammal Stranding Center in Woods Hole, MA and was successfully treated and released back into the wild.  The problem is not only here in New England, but also worldwide, particularly in some of the poorest nations.  Therefore, the Philippines was chosen for the site of the pilot project.  From “Turning Old Fish Nets into New Carpet” by Julie Stein “This is a good place to begin since the Philippines is considered the centre of the centre of marine shore fish biodiversity, and Danajon Bank is in the centre of the Philippines. Formed over 6000 years ago, it is one of the few documented double barrier reefs in the world. The discarded fishing net problem is acute here. The Bank sprawls across nearly 130 kilometers and it is estimated that the nets discarded each year here could cover the length of the Danajon Bank 400 times over.”

Interestingly enough, the nylon used to make some of the fishing nets is the same as the nylon used to make carpeting.  It doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch to think that the net nylon can be recycled into carpet fiber. 

It might be that the original project, designing and manufacturing efficient and effective fishing nets, could have benefited from the long term approach we advocate.  In other words, perhaps the project could have been made more successful by thinking of the ultimate disposal of the nets during the upfront planning, thereby having the recycling effort in place when needed.  We know that is a little controversial as the traditional project management thinking is that once the project is handed over to operations (steady state) that the project manager’s job is done.  We advocate a slightly different philosophy, one we believe is more sustainable, but that’s a discussion for another day.

To return to “Net-Works,” as the pilot effort in the Philippines is called.  It also addresses the triple bottom line: people, planet, profits in that the project seeks to protect the fragile reefs, provide local jobs during the cleanup effort and by using recycled material, help Interface’s bottom line.    As we see it, it is a win-win! 

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?