Sustainability Projects (10,668 words)

This is a transcript of the BA Video Series Linkedin Live webinar on SUSTAINABILITY PROJECTS

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Speakers

Max Geerling

Katrin Heeran

Kumar Rex

Adam Slimin

Vijay Nair

Intro

Vijay Nair:

Before I get our panelists to introduce themselves. I'd like to introduce the topic to our audience. So everyone's on the same page. 

So I started looking up around the topic on sustainability and what that actually meant some definitions out there. And I came across this interesting definition from the white paper from McGill university.

And their definition is sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs in that they shouldn't do natural resources. We also need social and economy resources. Sustainability is. Not just in minor, mentalism embedded in most definitions of sustainability.

We also find concerns for social equity and economy development. So it's quite interesting and topic on its own and that. This is an opportunity for us to learn from our guest speakers when they start sharing them on their projects. So before we start going into the project experience if I could just ask each fall speakers to self, introduce themselves.

Max Geerling:

Originally in financial economics and for last seven plus years in a and kind of customer success management in various different food businesses. And for the last kind of four years, nearly. Working with environment technology and introducing that to various different businesses and industries.

Also always been a very big advocate of better business and specifically for conscious capitalism and EPLI talk a little bit later in the Q and a about how that kind of ties in with sustainability. And actually a lot was the definition that we do to escape. And the prison I worked for an Australian company called based out of Australia.

And we sell in the UK, a company product which is a food waste digester, which allows businesses to treat food waste locally, rather than requiring logistics and avoiding the risk of things going to landfill and reducing the economy. CO2 emissions are related to the traditional waste industry.

Katrin Heeran:

 I'm really thrilled to be here today for this very interesting session on sustainability. So I'm a German citizen. I'm about to of the residents. moved to Brussels in 2014. And my professional background is in environmental and sustainability policy projects.

I mainly work for the government non-profits consultancy and think-tanks, and my personal mission is as well to protect our natural surroundings. Finding solutions, business and reading, mentoring approaches or the future? 

Kumar Rex:

Thank you everyone for having me in this live session. So I'll introduce myself.

My name is and currently I'm. A student at Frankfort university of applied science, and I'm doing masters in urban planning with a deep focus in sustainable development. And I have completed my undergraduate degree in civil engineering from India and obviously I'm from India. 

Adam Slimin:

So my name's Adam S. I've been in the environments tend to be centered around about 25 years now. So I worked for many of the global design and engineering companies. So for likes of Atkins and Stantec and other people on them as well.

So. Have worked inside the water sectors directly on the, on the customer side, on that as well. And also on the client side as consultancy. And I've also spent five years directly in the it sector, building sustainably platforms and solutions for the big global two 50. I'm currently just started as the technical director of sustainability.

The Stantec one of the big global design engineering companies. So yes, lots of, lots of experience in what was sustainability when it first started and the evolution to where it is now.

Project Experiences

Max Geerling:

So as mentioned, I've worked for the last four plus years nearly to get to with kind of businesses that provide solutions and mostly tech solutions for food waste as being an issue.

And maybe for some of you to get an idea, What food waste really means for sustainability in the future at the moment. So one third of all food that we have available to eat gets actually wasted. That's edible that ends up being 1.3 billion, tons, and growing every year as we get wealthier around the world and less conscious about how we should be using our resources.

And if food waste actually was a country to give you kind of the top three it would be the third. Because country after the U S and China, in terms of CO2 emissions. So quite a big scale challenge and one that we've been building for many, many decades. So not as easy to solve as we might think.

In terms of project experience, I'd like to touch briefly on two exact examples and what they have in common, but just briefly for backgrounds on different projects. So with the wholesale. I worked for a company for a while in London and introduced within their business kind of goods and controls for the wholesale food that they would get delivered in from various suppliers and then worked alongside the operations team and introducing a lean production process for all the purchase orders they would get main goal was that data accuracy and less waste and higher satisfaction for customers and all the order state placed.

Then I worked for a company called winnow and you just now who really help around the awareness of food waste within businesses. By allowing them to measure it and then manage it better and think about how they can control it better with changes they might make down the line. And we've, we're not specifically, the main thing was first learned was around.

You need to have awareness within the business and you need to get key stakeholders involved, understands what challenges are they facing, why they're facing them and what might be the. Best solution for them to start challenging that and solving it with you just at some become even a further thing, which is, well now you've understood the problem, but yeah.

How can you actually treat the volume of the waste? I was talking about the 1.3 billion and have an impact on reducing being the third country. In the line of the U S and China. And that's been amazing, but so, but all those kind of that have introduced as examples, having common is they require willingness of businesses to change their mindset, everyone, what they have been doing and accept that they actually have a problem and how they're contributing to that problem and how they can be part of solving it and really focusing on themselves.

It also requires a kind of top-down approach in that case. Right? If you don't get the stakeholders along the top involved, then it's very difficult. To get the team engaged to really fulfill that on a day-to-day basis. But what it actually does at the same time, it creates more openness. Once the awareness is there and encourages the communication from the bottom up of coming up with further suggestions for other ways of solving the problem in the day-to-day operations.

But key for all of that to really work is it needs to be an alignment of why we're bringing change into your organization. And what outcome do the key stakeholders want to get out of that by bringing in new technology or changing processes? So for the wholesale case, there was a pretty clear alignment on that.

One of the key issues everyday was you'd have additional deliveries going out because you didn't really know what had come in at the beginning of the night, when you started producing orders. And as a result, you had more wastage cause orders that would come back that were wrong and correct. Do you tend to then throw away.

And at the same time you had more wastage off because you didn't actually know what was properly in stock. So by kind of putting a gatekeeper in place and a team in place that was able to actually police what was coming in and confirm that it was really what the buying team had ordered and to the quality to buy it.

He meant ordered, allowed to prove how stuff was being put into circulation. And then it, over the coming days, a weeks to based on their, on their shelf life. And that meant less wastage. But from a top-down was really important, was having more data accuracy and that had to start where information was coming in.

They didn't want to, it also data accuracy for the production flow of putting those purchase orders together and understand that workflow overall better industrious required it tech and those processes being enabled through that. But as they didn't really expect them and learned a lot about very quickly that also didn't brings the bottom up saying, well, you know, you have all this data now I can finally have that conversation with you about the point I've been trying to have discussed with you for awhile.

And that makes less quality issues, better information. And the impact is overall you're together, more successful, actually communicating and making change happen. But then the outside effect. Is you have less wastage, less complaints. Cause most orders are successfully delivered to the right quality.

And the higher satisfaction through word of mouth means more chefs will refer to wholesaler as a great partner to supply to, you know, food. So it has a big, big knock on effect, but from a business point of view, you actually have a higher efficiency per kilogram by him and over time per person that works in your business, fulfilling orders and being part of that engine that will drive growth over time.

And. Further improve. What you're trying to do in this wholesaler in particular is looking at how to provide better foods and reintroduce foods. So that's very much when sustainability on the food system, but you can only do that when your operation, you really successful and know your numbers. And the downside in the short term would have been, it required more commitment from everyone and learning and understanding, but to everyone's benefit you needed more labor initially to kind of get everything set up and in place to then understand how you allocated labor better.

And all of that obviously required time. And that time had to be put in from the top down and eventually from the bottom up to be successful. And then the second example, if there's still enough time Vijay as a project experience for change management now in the last year with, with UJIs is actually introducing new processes.

You often can get a lot of resistance, but if you're just substituting something that has existed, that brings a slight change with it. And introduce that awareness that I was mentioning, then a food waste, they gesture that kind of substitutes, existing food waste bins. Or actually starts giving the business an option to segregate their waste properly and disposed food waste in a better way, starts highlighting the issue of how that business is contributing to food waste, which they may have never known and an easy metric that they can then use is every day they will know suddenly how much waste they really have because of disposing it locally.

They can see it from the equipments, but they can just divide that by the number of guests they serve that day as well. So to have a very easy metric, very quickly of lending. How much are we actually contributing to this problem per guests that we serve. And then what naturally happens is everybody wants to learn more about that and ask questions about what are the reasons that we have food waste and what we have to really honest about with food waste because of the food system is a lot of it as a percentage of weights is.

Unavoidable, because it's just part of preparing foods, you know, consuming food. There is a lot of heavyweights waste, for example, a cauliflower or broccoli. Right. We use the flirts, but everything else that it came with, but at delivery gets disposed. So yeah, we need to be honest about that within businesses when we introduce that, but it really requires a whole business Sunday to take ownership of managing their food waste, which if you just have bins, the moment you put it in, you give that responsibility away.

And with that starts the awareness and the piece of learning and kind of even desire to want to change things and the attitudes and starts shifting. And then you start maybe eventually seeing changes in the operation of how they prep food. It might eventually go to the business saying if there.

No rights basics. You say, well, we'd like something like food waste monitoring, which is what I was doing, the previous company with winnow. And then you get into the really fine detail of why food waste is happening and then possibly even thinking about. What are we going to operationally change? And if you didn't think about the impact that can have, for example, in the cruise ship industry that when a worked in, in eye care in the UK and various retailers be catering, big hotel chains but you need to find a right way in to get people excited about wanting to see change happen.

And I felt that for you just now that works far better because you have a product that brings in a slight change. Usually only substitutes things, but gives them ownership. And the initial impacts of just logistically days, maybe bit of a challenge, cause you need to change your way of working, but the positive impacts are pretty quick.

We often introducing and usually, which is in better understanding of the business as a whole, for the top, for the bottom up again, kind of that initial idea of what is our waste and being able to have these conversations words you haven't. Environmental impact because you're solving the problem more now, locally on sites.

So you're cutting out the middleman in disposing and looking after your waste and over time, actually staff prefer it because it's actually a cleaner solution. It's actually easier to use solution over time because most food waste bins are very big, 120 liters. If you suddenly have to carry them when the lift breaks down, that's not a pleasure for anyone.

You often get food waste companies that won't collect the bins because they're too full. Because you can't only fill them to a certain level. So this way you kind of, yeah. As I said, have the awareness and take your ownership and really start facilitating that change in the day to day operations which we see a lot of success with.

Katrin Heeran:

So we decided that I talked to you a little bit about my experience. Positioning and telecommunications association on sustainability over the last two years. So it's a completely different area from what we just had from max. But everybody's also actually impacted by this because it's about connectivity and most of us experience connectivity issues over the last year we did, especially under the COVID crisis.

So maybe just to give you a brief situation of the telecommunication sector, it's a bit particular. In most countries that have been in the past, it has been like this big state on telecommunications company. Then there was an organization of the markets and the S the big ones still remain from the markets.

Like, I should say, like, I'm in Germany, British telecom in UK, you all know the national line it's called the incumbents. So they are the ones. Still owning the biggest part of the network and then that not enough. And you're a number of other, some big names, but also a lot of small players coming up. So these are the competitors and these were the ones that I represented to you in Brussels, in the Brussels office.

So what's your policy and for which I did the positioning because it's not only companies, it's only utilities with a rather small telecoms. Departments usually. So what we have seen that mostly in the past, the big networks are mostly copper. Copper is rather not very energy efficient. So now we have much more efficient networks like fiber networks and what we've seen in Germany, for example, That the competitors, the smaller ones, they are the ones building out modern fiber networks because they are not sitting on the old existing networks.

So what does this got to do with sustainability in the past? This sector did not really particularly look into this issue because they were not considered to be. One of the big polluters of one of those that use child labor in other countries. So there were like kind of, not really tackled too much by this issue, but there has been a change and this started to show up even more last year.

So the green deal, the eco green deal, I'm sure that you all heard about it by now. Because the European commission made it like to be their top priority. And this will continue even though we have the COVID crisis. Now, then you also talk about the re recovery and the, your climate law is part of this.

So what we saw really early once the new commission was in place that's they were impacted. On actually all sectors. So if we want to have the de-carbonization in Europe by 2050 and the targets in the middle by 2030, already to 55, or even 60% emission reduction, every sector needs to do their parts. And so every sector is actually examined.

We have seen papers from the commission, like already starting in December. Respective also for the sector that I've been watching out for the ICT sector it's called like greening ICT. We need to be greening ICT. There was a leaked document already in January, just to give you some ideas on what's already coming up and much more that the follow and then was already said, are suggested by the commission, that data centers, the ICT infrastructure and tech companies should become carbon neutral by 2025 already.

There was an Eagle facture coming out to give you some numbers also. So where are we now? What is the ICT sector contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions at the moment it's around 2%, maybe a bit more now, but these were the last numbers and the projected increase. I mean, there was so much more connectivity these days, and this will be more and more with artificial intelligence with the big cloud computing.

Everything we are using. So it's projected that that will increase if no further measures are taken to 14% of all total global greenhouse gas emissions. So that will become an important area actually. But at the same time, We also see, it's also been stated in the spec sheet, that technology and specifically digital technology and technology building on high connectivity can access to parts to reduce the emissions in other sectors to really consider a considerable amount, namely seven times the emissions that it's creating and its own sector.

So it can best contribute to 15%. We have emission reductions totally by 25 yet at the same time. There it's of course important to set the right guidelines and that's what the European commission is concerned about. And that's why it's even important for small and medium size and utilities all over Europe.

There will be different measures in other countries. I know best about what's happening in the EU at the moment. So what this kind of applications are, maybe you're wonder. For example, artificial intelligence, you can develop machines that continually improve themselves to optimize themselves, to use less material to use less energy, to become more energy efficient in the base area.

Max has mentioned the porch area, so there are many more other areas that you need more recycling. And so they also . We have smart energy grid. Smart cities. You're all now homeworking now doing video conferences like this financially, this becomes more and more practice. And there might be less commuting and the slides related to using these areas, but for all of that, we need high connectivity.

And especially in rural areas, we quite often have a lower connectivity. I don't know if any of you experienced this. I certainly did. So you're sitting in a train and suddenly no connection anymore, and people are living on the countryside and they even move to cities. So in order to leave, no one behind, it's really important to speed up the rollout of like connectivity everywhere, which is a part to also address the social dimensions of sustainability.

Another there are already very specific targets actually coming up by different players. The United nations framework convention on climate change together with the global East sustainability initiative, they already presented a plan in February about specific habits targets by de-carbonization of the ICT sector.

They are, of course not in legislation yet, but these suggestions are now coming up. So it's important to watch out for that. For example, a 62% emission reduction would be required from the fixed network operators by 2030. 25% from mobile network operators and 53% by data center operators. This is a high amount about two bucks.

The de-carbonization call itself costs. So, what do we have done then there was a really a high interest in across the whole association with a member of the board members of the state of communications association in understanding what's at stake and also rare, rare we have standing in this moment, companies are standing and what we found that there was an agreement on this.

We all know copper is less energy energy efficient than fiber networks. We, there were so many different numbers like everywhere. So we did a study on empirical data in Germany, from network providers and operators to find out what is the real savings. So we actually focus you on energy efficiency because it's rather energy demand.

And an easy, easy to measure. Then we could also look into life cycle analysis of the products and everything, but this was just a pedal fast indicator. As energy is one of the major issues considering the high energy demand and increase that we will see in the coming years. So what'd we found out was that.

Fiber networks three to 17 times more energy efficient than copper networks under the assumption that the utilization rate is 50 to a hundred percent utilization rate. That means like how much capacity does these networks have and how much data you can, you can like send along. Of course, we see increasing utilization rate these days.

So we would rather move to higher rates in the future. And yes, and it's between three and 17, because they are always depends on the network structure and everything, but we really know that and the European commission has come from. all communications that came up, even in the funding schemes that they want to reply.

We place the old couple networks within you, very efficient and high conductivity, even 5g. If some of you might have had this, this name five G. So this is a very, a speed connectivity where we replace probably sometime in the future. We are not there yet. We are far from being there yet, because if you put five G, which is the more vital part of it, we need the fixed networks first.

To cover respective areas to build them a Wells house on that after box. Yeah. So how did that continue now? So while there was this big interest, all the time it's media communications came up and were really easily washed out to what the communications are. Resource met a lot of interests. He had the commission and then other players then we all know the COVID crisis hits and it really hits.

So that means for small and medium size enterprises and far. Small departments within utilities. The daily business is the only thing that's important at this kind of moment, because you want to make sure that you can still make your controls on the networks or the next month that you can continue the rollout.

There were all these Constructionism constraints coming up. That's why this has been inability interests. Rent a bit back. And this is an issue that big company that have like sustainability departments, sustainability officers, or even sustainability as their core mission. They don't run into that. But like, this is why I think we need a specialty or some support mechanisms for small and medium sized companies.

And smaller units to really support them in these apartment issues. Also in crisis times like the COVID crisis and on the other hand, and this is really the interesting part. The COVID crisis showed us how much we depend on connectivity and how much more we need high connectivity and functioning everywhere that all the appliances that we already depend on are really working and There again, we had a communication from the European commission in September.

So very recently where they gave recommendations on connectivity to boosting fiber and IFG roll out everywhere in the S and this is not only for connectivity, but also to enable the recovery evergreen recovery. And last month we used high connectivity. As I mentioned before, all these technologies that we need that can be used digitalization can be used as an enabler for sustainability while we set the right framework conditions.

So for that we need the basic, the basic networks, which we don't have everywhere yet. So exciting times to come up. And we also, we've also seen that during the crisis, the energy consumption went down in many sectors while it was also linked to reduced business activities. But also we can maybe take some lessons out of it.

That'd be my, from home from once in awhile that we might need less computing. Community, sorry. Do a little bit more of video conferences like this one today. And that's really reduced our emissions even though, and I think that the telecom sector and the small ones, the competitors that have been in the networks can play a major role in this respective fields.

Kumar Rex:

I like to introduce why it is important to integrate sustainability in construction industry. And then I'll also give some ways or approaches to integrate sustainability in construction industry. So let's start with the numbers. The reason why it is important.

So we all know according to the UN forecast there will be 23% increase in population by the end of 2050, which again means you will need the houses for dwellings. You will need houses, you'll need industries for production. Make some, our daily needs productions and et cetera. So which again comes back to the construction industry.

Another main reason why it is important is one of the total waste produced is comes from construction industry. Which means that the total waste generated needs to be needs and needs to be maintained to reduce the waste, generated, which again comes, which is again, a part of sustainability.

That part point is a. 11% of the total global gas produced comes directly from one single sector is that it's a construction industry. So these are a few main things which needs to be curtailed by using sustainability as a concept and introducing it in the industry. So there are several approaches which are, which could be integrated with the.

Sector, for example, we have seen receipt of windows. We see those everywhere in the buildings, which is also important competent of a building, but that needs to be that needs to be, you know, introduced in such a way that the heating process or the cooling process can be can be

modulated. Well, we can use we can reduce the amount of energy used for keeping heating off our building or cooling off a building in a tropical climate and et cetera. We can see the amount of energy utilized and what our industry, what the sector, the amount of waste generated. For example, if we see On an average, that is one 30 liters of water used or Buxton in a household.

And 80% of that water is then transferred people, the waste treatment plant. And that is not easy to do that. It requires money to request manpower. It requires technology, which. Which is not, which is costly, right? So we need to integrate solutions to provide or to minimize the amount of waste we generate.

For example, in my personal experience, I like to see that that when we when the waste wastewater is sent to the waste treatment plant the end product, which is also on a sludge, it's very difficult to decompose it. It's very difficult to know. You cannot throw it directly to an ocean to oceans, or you cannot landfill.

It will again, degrade the quality of groundwater next up. So I tried taking that sludge. I tried that sludge. And again, I try to mix that basic component with the traditional brick materials that is clear and sand, et cetera. And what I observed is 25, 5% of the total sludge generated from the waste treatment plant can be utilized in building materials can be utilized as a building materials.

Which is a huge amount because there's no other way to decouple. There is no other way to reduce that waste. For example, if you see all the countries data Germany is the only country which can eliminate up to 98% of like which can treat 98% of the waste. And in that sense it's very hard.

It's not easy. For every country to take the technology and integrate with their waste treatment plants. So this is a very easy way or one can a country can introduce or reduce the amount of face generated. So this was a, one of my personal project, which I did in my bachelor's and moving to my present situation.

I've been planning and working in urban planning department. So This department is entirely focused on sustainable development, which means we need to we, we need to apply all the social SDG goals of before planning or on the planning state. So that in future we can achieve that goals. For example, zero hunger, or for example, sustainable cities.

We need to provide technology or we need to give open spaces where the poor and the rich can come together. And sit together and talk by which will again, result in reducing the inequalities are giving economic equal opportunities for sharing the thoughts. And so this was all about my personal experience.

Adam Slimin:

 I've just been scribbling down a few notes. I've got some, a project examples. I'm going to take a slightly different stance. And a lot of people have been bombarding with numbers and facts and various things. So what I'll do is I'll sort of take it back to sort of an experience of a professional on the grounds of trying to win projects, trying to deliver them and the challenges that you get with organizations about how it happens and having been teams of between 1522.

50 people on projects on that, what you need to do. And w what's the, some challenges that you meet on projects on that. But before I just start on that as well Kumar we'll have a chat after is on now. I'll show you the the such such plans in the UK where they turn them into granules and put them onto land or, or burn them on there as well.

And they've been doing that here for about 20, 25 years. So you might be interested in how they sort of take. Sludge and how the user, cause as you say, it was a big issue to get landfill for many years on them, as well as to be captained made sure we didn't impact groundwater on there as well. But yeah, the use of sludge is, is a heavy topic and has been thought about for, for, for many years, I will we'll catch up with that afterwards.

Okay. I'll, I'll deal with the, a couple of projects. What's quite good. It's actually very fortunate to BJ Dota. One of the projects I was gonna just chat about was it was coming called MTN who's who's in the telecoms sectoral now as well. Now that wasn't too specific was just happened to be one.

The one that I picked on there as well. So MTN Africa's largest or second largest. The it provider. And this was a project that it's been about sort of five, six years ago. So it's quite open it's, it's a, it's a good example of, of how a professional within the sector. How'd you get involved with companies, how, you know, how'd you win work from, from scratch?

How does that build up? I mean, you know, you've got the, the policy which scratch has already spoken about on that these top level things that are kicking around on there as well. If I, if I'm honest, most of the decent companies are not waiting for government policies because I'm a fight. They can be both slow.

Everyone's got to wait for them. Most good organizations now understand that sustainability is embedded in the core of their organization. It's going to deliver them the loin sort of benefits. And I mean that for me, the three pillars, social, economic, and environment on there as well. They understand that as a business driver, but themselves.

They will develop policies and standards to actually help them drive it. So within this context, on that, if you look at someone like MTN, this was, this was came about via I simple chat. That was the business and the sales teams already out there chatting these organizations. What are you up to?

What are your challenges what's going on within your organization? And out of that often comes little nuggets of information. Well, you know, we, we've got a policy, we do a lot of reporting. We don't know where our data is or we think we can be more. Efficient, actually, our PR is quite bad on that or internally people in the business of calling out for change in the organization.

These are all sorts of dynamics that happen when you're trying to win a project and how you got to deliver projects and socially as well, socially, it's basically internal. And at an extent, if you look at it in those sorts of factors, socially, internally, all the, all the staff bought into this, how are we going to get supported in the business, on them as well?

It is it going to happen? How's it going to happen. Who's going to buy into this who can help us deliver on that. So you've got these internal social dynamics that all businesses have around how they embed sustainability in an organization. And also you've got the external that the existential threat on there as well.

What do we look like outside? You know, how do we sell our projects? Are we seen as a green company? Know, have we got commitments? Is our CEO committed towards zero net carbon? Or, you know, what is our challenges? No aspiration. So you've got those two aspects around social, and you can also look at social from a, from a project perspective.

When you start building something or doing something, you are impacting people. So the aspect around, you know, art people bought into this purchase, whether it's a project or whether we it's actually. Company changing. I don't get MTN, you know, are people going to buy our network? You know, our, our publics, because we're perceived to be the, of the company as well.

So it's all those sorts of dynamics coming on. And when you go and join it, when you call it, start working for a company and you're looking at strategy, those were the sorts of dynamics you have to think about. I have to work with companies to get themselves organized on that. Economic impact that John and other people that have spoke about the business case, you know, you cannot escape.

The fact that business cases are vitally important for sustainability on there as well. You know, we're not, the sustainability has gone through trials and tribulations over the past few decades on there as well. You know, some of the early days it was facing fisted news, very. In a very one one-off projects.

It was some fairly niche areas that were being looked at. Then there came aspiration around, you know, we could, we, you know, we can, we can save everything. And there was a, there was a real big pusher on greening greening on there, and CEO's caught on board on that, but I could consume, changed my opinion on that.

And actually a lot of it has become more, much more hard-nosed in terms of an economic case for businesses to actually make a change. And drive sustainability. And if we're really planning on is sustainability should balance up on a business case, because normally what we're talking about is, you know, reduce, reuse, recycle the, you know, the context of what we're talking about.

But if you look at those contexts themselves, You know, would you say by itself is, is economically normally useful because you're not using the same, reducing recycling. These all concepts are actually what you're telling your businesses be more efficient, you know, do do it well, do it by now. If you turn that around to, if you have a move sustainability you did from a purely business perspective on that as well, you're telling people don't throw that away, use it more efficiently.

You know, these, these are quite common concepts that actually do turn it around from sustainability. And looking at the business concept, you know, most businesses beginning what absolutely we should be doing that. It's all about efficiency. That's all about saving stuff. That's all about driving down costs and overheads for the business.

So sustainability in itself. It's, it's, it's, it's quite, it's not cheap in many ways. Quite a simple concept for most businesses to understand, because it should, the economic case should stack up in whatever way you're looking at it. Even from an economic perspective, you know, if you, if you, if you're greening it because you're actually, then don't get more clients because you know, you are a better type of company to come together towards a much more holistic way of looking at sort of projects.

So in terms of MTN on that as well, you know, those are a couple of days that we did look at, you know, this is. Quite quite a while ago, even before. So, you know, the policies came out on them as well. They were very interesting looking at their reporting policy. So they put on the gr Gryo and other African quoting things on there was also as a businesses they have in their, in their, in their manifesto or in their, in, in the, in the blurb that they put out to clients on there as well.

You know, they had an aspiration to do more reporting, looking at their you know, that stalls of reporting, the quality of their data. Where that light is coming from, you know, they covered, they covered 15, 20 countries on there as well. So how, how good is all this data? Where is it all coming from on that?

So there's a whole big thing around organizations understanding how good that I choose in the first place. So when they come and come to a port in the UK, you were looking at scope one, scope, two scope, three emissions, how good is all the emissions data? Where's it all coming from? So there's a, there's a whole challenge around business value, understanding where that data is.

How good is it or clever or reporting, do we understand as a business, what we're doing then there's the, there's the economic aspect around? I won't be coming. Talk to organizations. Ultimately it comes down to, you will want to do your, you got your targets, but then you actually, you know, you live your targets and objectives on that.

You got to come up with projects and all those projects have to be built up around a business case. So any of these people out here today, he was going to be talking around, you know, how you get into the sector? What are the challenges? You know, you can have to stop producing these sorts of business cases around what is our project, what are we going to deliver on there and crafting that in to a former delivery that explains the business.

If you do this, it will cost you this amount. It will take this long. And after that, you will get these benefits for you as a business. And those comes back to the business aspirations around their sustainability strategy. What is they're trying to achieve? Who's directing the conversations within the business.

Are you dealing with the chief sustainability officer or are you dealing with the CFO? You know what sea level, sea level, I mean, board level, who's drawn leaving these conversations. Who's employing you as in the business and who wants what they want out of the business on that. And after that, you know, as sustainability professionals, we get the benefits of improving organizations.

Would you using carbon footprints, all the sorts of things that we want on that, but that comes down to as a, as a consultant. And then this will last week as that, that's how it evolves within a project delivery on that. And obviously the environment aspect on that is important to mystique the benefits out the end it's, you know, either reduced emissions or it's, it's, it's a reduced cost aspects.

So. I know those comments around, you know, the price per liter or, you know, the amount of kit, you know, the greenie of grids on there. When they put more recoverable NG on their wind turbines, these are all things that are the outcome. Put some activities on there, which in essence reduce the environmental footprint of organizations, which is the whole context of what we're trying to do on there as well.

It's impact businesses and organizations to develop ways that they can, they can deliver on that as well. And it's actually quite interesting consumer spoke about, you know, we looked at data centers. We look to all the, all the sorts of things around how efficient they were. Could they be more efficient?

Could they, could they, could they replace their equipment? What is their asset life lifecycle replacement? You know, have they got really inefficient equipment on that, but actually just because something's inefficient on that, you've got to think about the cost of the carbon cost of moving that equipment.

Now you're buying something new in on that. It's also actually just the numbers stack up on that. So people just think, Oh, the place old with new, but actually. Now how inefficient is it on there? It could be the fact that the embedded carbon on, on something that you were replacing would take 15, 20 years to actually get it, to actually recover the amount of energy that is saved.

And the life cycle of that project might only be 10 years. You know? So these, these are the things that you've just got to think about and don't know what might seem quite simple, actually need some care of consideration when you talk about, and also the business case, you know, you, you turn that into a business and say, now you've got to spend in the last 15, 20 million pounds.

Buying this new equipment because actually it's going to make you more green on that. We can't be naive to think the business is, you know, a bottomless pit of cash and just going to go away and spend things on there as well. So that's where the social aspect on them as well, hearts and minds of organizations come in, can we convince them this is the right thing to do?

Who's going to sign the check and those sorts of things. So, you know, this is these are the sorts of project experience you've got to understand when you look at sustainability, it is not as simple as the fact that everyone is just going to accept the numbers and just going to do it. There was a lot of work professionals who've got to do to understand businesses and understand where all the hearts and minds and drivers.

And how things happen on that. So that's a live example of, of, of of, of a project or a large organization looking at way that they deliver strategy. And that, that puts it lasted for about three to four years of a number of iterations would be, we go in for sort of three, four months at a time, help them with certain aspects and then come back on there as well.

So very much a partnership both within that sort of organization. Okay. The last one, but I'll be, I'll be quick on that as well. The last one I'm just going to very quickly cover is sort of. Aspect of kind of modern wave, innovative looking at sort of technology use as, as want LinkedIn. And our recently I've been doing a lot of work around remote sensing on projects on that remote sensing is a great way of taking a much more holistic view.

Of projects on that. So I work a lot in the water sector in the UK, but actually a lot of the infrastructure projects also use them on that as well. It's how, how do we understand the impacts of projects from a sustainability perspective on that? So the ability now to use satellite technology to really understand the land, the people.

The impacts is it is extreme, is extremely powerful on those. You, you would get back into a project would be very much traditionally very much almost people intake the people looking at a screen, you know, really trying to look, look, and physically see that let's say we'll use an example of a pipeline.

It could be waste treatment works. It could be a new housing development. It could be whatever, you know, you get people scanning over. Printouts and various things making sort of judgment calls around it on there as well. Well, the use of the remote sensing technology has allowed the satellite information to take a much more analytic approach towards understanding impacts on that as well.

So the amount of data that flows of alums everyday that toddlers are going, man, they're looking at the earth surface on there as well. So that data is extremely powerful. When you want to understand. W where, where this, these activities happening, what is the impact that's going to happen? You can do a lot of data processing on there as well.

So you can overlay suite images onto your, your, your land. Now see much more dynamic way of where. This activity happening? What is the context, all of the environment or the place where this project is sort of happening in that from a sustainability perspective, allows you to have a much more informed conversation with your clients about actually, do you understand that this is happening here on that as well, and create a much more dynamic environment and even move things around in a much.

Okay. I'm usually with dynamic commercial, but that's, that's really the essence around it is, is it's a better way of using information to make more dynamic decisions for clients on that. You know, they can see the impact, they can see the effects, they can see where that's going. You know, if we took back construction work, which is suppose on there as well, a lot of big projects take up a huge amount of land in terms of site layout.

So where, where there's a site work going on. Huge compounds belong Parklawn. We sold them as well. And sometimes these, these, these selections are made quite late on in projects on their own. They're quite difficult to understand now, where's that going? What's the impact on them as well. So satellite in remote sensing allows for very quick and path will decisions to be made.

Do you understand? What is this sustainable food project? What is the, what is the environmental impact of projects what's going on on that as well? And then you started to get lots of things like the social impact or where's the news buildings on that? Do that in an environment that's much more it orientated now.

Well, other than something, which is quite a slow process that burns away in, in the back of projects as well. So that's another example of how technology or how things are changing. The way that sustainability is beginning to be delivered, delivered on projects on that in a much more dynamic and dynamic way.

Your Questions Answered

Q. How do we quantify the benefits? With the strategy to justify the creation of a business case especially in an organization that focused maybe on revenue cost savings and sustainable team is less well understood ?

Katrin Heeran:

 I just have one comment to make on that and I think maybe. Adding the integrated reporting would be quite helpful. It's not only report financial information, but have this reported integrated reporting scheme. And you're also add environmental and social aspects, but then it's a data question.

Adam Slimin:

 how do we qualify? It's, simply hard. It's hard work because you got to understand what it is that your business case is justified. So if you are, let's say I don't use the example of it is a good one on energy efficiency.

Within an organization, you know, this isn't something you can just walk and go, well, you need to be more energy efficient. You know, these, these are you, you would need to buy engineers to understand what is going on in the business, on there as well. What are you replacing? What is it, what is it going to do?

How long would it take? How complex is this? Your business case actually is it's quite complex, which is why, you know, sometimes it's quite busy, difficult business to change. Because they really got to understand who they are, what they're doing and how these impacts are going to happen on that as well.

So developing a business base is like everything before there is professionals getting in understanding your organization, understanding what the drivers are. So we need to ask where sometimes it gets, you know, you, you see businesses with targets around. Oh, we're going to be 10% more efficient energy efficient.

You know, I, I started looking at round figures and I had to, I started to worry sometimes on that. Well, where did was that 10% top down cost of bottom up, you know, who, who appreciated how efficient that organization can be on that. And that's where the hard work comes in know as well. You know, is it building a business cases like Epic on a business case?

No. Yeah. Being energy efficient is a sustainability benefit in that sort of context on that as well. However, if you looked at it from an asset lifecycle maintenance perspective on that as well, you do no different on that as well. If the outcome here would be as well as more energy efficient and paying less bills on that as well, using less energy is also less carbon emissions.

So, you know, sometimes these things can be wrapped up amongst lots of other things on their armpit and most business cases have those sorts of aspects that you need to deal with on that. 

it's a well-known term, but when business perspective and business understand a reduction in something is good for them, then that's where you, you really are going to struggle because reduction is by nature.

You're just buying less. Used to having less weight because the outcome normally is that sort of aspect. So, you know you know, I tend to be quite hard nose around sustainability now with organizations because, you know, the, the days of having to convince them that sustainability is good for their organization should be well past this.

I mean, you know, they've always poundages on that, but, you know, we all run in this evil web. We all bombarded with impacts of. What we, as a society and humans are causing on there as well. So, you know, we, we should be having this as a compensation and still it should be more around or what do we do about it?

Max Geerling:

 Specifically for the case that we presently provide for the company to work for it, you're either introducing a substitute like asset, or you adding something as a data point that currently don't have, which is let's stop segregating food waste.

And normally. Our cases, we will do that cheaper for the next five, six years. Then you have been paying probably, you probably don't know what you've actually been paying if you've not been segregating. And then the element is less started sustainability. It's more, what's the more economical way of looking at waste into the future and the trends have been waste costs have been going up.

So if you're now looking in a substitute or an add on, that's going to bring your general waste costs down. By introducing a technology that will take care of your food waste locally. And you're investing into the future by saving money and actually preventing off being hit with higher costs on land, and then trying to figure out a solution.

So the business case is typically very straightforward and for us, it works, you know, of course, larger organizations to have individual units vote. They would use the systems where it works for the pump on the roads that just says I'm remote. It's expensive for me, that my waste collected. So this is a win-win for me.

And then sustainability might not even been the reasonable. We spoke to them in the first place, but that's what then do you want is peace thoughts over time, and that might lead as a next step to energy efficiency and you know, it might lead to group viewing your supply chain and what kinds of other topics.

So yeah, we tend to partner with businesses for at least five years initially, and then. As a business, we're looking into lots of other technologies and other areas to compliment that.

Kumar Rex:

Actually everything depends on data, what we get and how we analyze. The things in dumps off energy efficient buildings, or in terms of saving money and for existing organization, one can analyze the existing materials of the materials used or used in the buildings before construction.

And and the present. So there are several softwares, like insights, which gives you an overview of the difference between the energy consumed or energy, what you are consuming right now. And when you change the materials. So like at the end, it always depends on the amount of money you will.

You want to invest because integrating a new technology in an existing structure is. It's not easy. Even the technology costs something and that cost is huge. So it depends on you, you want to create or integrate sustainability or not, or you want to invest that much in water. Not obviously in the long run, you will save money, but it's a matter of time and your idea.

Q. How can a Business Analyst get involved within Sustainability projects (Green Business Analyst roles)?

Adam Slimin:

 I've employed many, many graduates over the years on that as well. Everyone comes in, everyone has to start somewhere on that as well. I'd say the. My best advice for graduates that are coming into the sector or now as well with you know, make sure you do as much research as possible before you start.

We, everyone knows you can't turn up to a first job with lots of experience. So I would say enthusiasm is always a good one for me. Or also passion. For the, for the subject, I think is a very, very good one on that. I know, I know people are passionate about it, but you know, really it's not the easiest job in the world.

You get lots of push backs. It's, it's, there's lots of hard knocks going on. We are still in, in many ways perceived as, you know, a nicety Wilder than a necessity for some organizations. So you'll have to remain with passion you know, make sure your knowledge base. Good, bring something to it. And also just be a sponge, learn, understand what's going on, work with professionals around you on that.

As I said, you know, to understand that organizations still good quality, sometimes lot of experience that you can have to find from someone to understand where that's coming, whether it's a data, you know, a data point is great. But actually, where does that data point come from? How, how good is the data?

How valuable is the data? Is it blind? All those sorts of things. And those come back can come back to now having to pick up the phone you know, and in this case, talk to the data center engineer and go at point where that data's coming from. Is it like, where is it? It's a temperature sensor. When was it last calibrated, all those sorts of things.

Is it going to all those things can't happen when we have to work on now as well? Because whilst day two is King light's day two is better, you know, rubbish in rubbish out is it's still the normal now as well. So you've really got to understand your topic and just really get in there. So, you know, that's the thing for graduates, just have the appreciation that there's a lot to learn, have the passion, have the insurance, you know, and also when you're in it, just appreciate it where you are, you know, you know, it's, it's a, it's a great sector to be in on that with some great things.

Katrin Heeran:

I would just like to mention two really important aspects. Then I have learned, well when I worked on a sustainability management program, an MBA sustainability management program, we had lots of workshops with companies.

And when we found out also that if there's a sustainability project organized by somebody at the bottom of the organization it will risk to to not continue. So it's really important to get the CEO on board or the board members. So at one point at one point of this engagement, or even the finance department, because the finance department becomes interested as soon as they can save some money or get some more money with some aspects.

And then maybe one more advice. I didn't know, really an excellent Coursera course lately. Corporate sustainability by Bocconi university and they had some very up-to-date numbers, also an argument. What is the business case? What can he come? Interesting for our business to become a sustainable seven and also investors.

So to, to understand what investors are looking for more and more investors are starting even earlier than the companies in to look for sustainable investments. So I'm just trying to get some really up to date, argumented things, a bit to add on what you just said and keep on. It's definitely worth it.

Max Geerling:

how'd you get into the industry if it's an, a small set up business and you want to analyze that and see how you can help them get into that too, which is what we. Two for our sales team and consultants team on a day-to-day basis to bring the technology out is that needs to be yet to stakeholders engaged.

You need to know who to go. Other people that are going to own this, where the people are going to deal with it on a day-to-day basis, but more importantly, above that, who are the people that you need to engage early on to actually get it signed off and get it introduced. And every stakeholder is going to be interested in something else.

So you need to be able to communicate. What is it of interest to them that aligns what this is going to bring, right? So that everybody is not suddenly surprised once it does come in, but it's not bringing this or this or this or this. And then the key people really need to convince us people that use on a day-to-day basis because they become your advocates and Jenkins, and they also become your kind of referral and word of mouth.

And that's how I find sustainability becomes like an easy thing is when one business talks to another one, they don't even use the language that we've been using a lot, the terminologies, they just say, Hey, we've done that. That was a lot better. And by the way, it actually fits in with. A key problem at the moment, we're just trying to be more sustainable.

So trying to bring it down to that level is, is really important when you communicate it in the very abstract, how they come to kind of vision all the time. 

Kumar Rex:

You need to first clear with the idea of what you want to cover, which part of the sustainability you need to cover. And then come then type of gather the data only then you can achieve or get an idea of how you can Hope, why not?

Once that's companies and creating a sustainable or becoming a more sustainable, for example, a very small thing one company can do is going paperless. So once once a company do people stop, is your leg reduced? People in the entire organization, they can brag themselves that we are becoming more sustainable.

So it's an, every small process can help a company to become more sustainable. That's what I think. 

Conclusion

This is a transcript of the BA Video Series Linkedin Live webinar on SUSTAINABILITY PROJECTS

You can also listen to this video via the PODCAST

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Also check out the Wind Energy project discussion here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/wind-energy-engineering-project-discussion-vijay-nair/