I’m preparing materials for MACE21511 Project Planning and Control (14/15) for Civil Engineering … and my mind flew off.
We’ve (rather, me!) been drilled that planning is the trichotomy of time-cost-resource and have been delivering this for the past decade now. As one of my senior (now retired) said, “Planning is not only a skill, its an art. You need to understand the elements around, try to mitigate risks and grasp the unknown …. (and he went on and on …. and on)”. Got me thinking … we can all plan – we can ONLY plan! What is the ‘art’ bit? Look how wrong Manchester United was with the David Moyes appointment – sacked after 51 games. MUFC have years to plan for the retirement of Alex Ferguson … yet it went horribly wrong. Or pure luck on the bad run of results? Too little time for Moyes? Look how right Liverpool was by hold on to Luis Suarez – 30(+) goals and PFA Player of the Year. With all the troubles, controversy and bad-publicity along with Suarez, LFC continued with him … and it was right. Or pure luck he was so good this season? One-season wonder? Is this planning? I too plan to be in the office by 0830hrs, but trains got cancelled. Luck? We can try to plan for any eventualities – but things do go wrong. Why bother? And leave this down to our luck ? Now, how do I forward this to my students – no need to plan, lets rely on our luck. Get the horoscopes out!
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The European Parliament passed a Law requiring major businesses (publicly-traded with more than 500 employees) to report on non-financial indicators. In short, businesses now must report on Sustainability Indicators – social, environmental and human rights impact, diversity and anti-corruption policies. This is historic considering fewer than 10% of the largest EU companies disclose sustainability information regularly, which can make it difficult for investors to assess a company’s sustainability.
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) have a complete set of reporting rules (but some may say it is still incomplete). GRI is also a voluntary reporting scheme – how would one police them? Another reporting option is the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Large accounting firms (eg. EY, KPMG, CapGimini) are now getting involve to provide sustainability auditing, but who would be policing them? AccountAbility was set-up to set the standards for corporate responsibility and sustainable development; by building a robust reporting processes through the practical application of the AA1000 Assurance Standard and the AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard. However, they are working on their own. The ISO 26000 Social Responsibility provides guidance on how businesses and organizations can operate in a socially responsible way – but this is NOT an accreditable standard (eg. ISO9001, ISO14001, etc.) Given the dynamics on making Sustainability Reporting credible, they are still working in silos. Something need to be done! Then we ask … the Law will come into effect by 2017-ish for the major organisations. What are the impacts for small and independent businesses? SMEs? Yes, the Law will require the organisations to filter the information down to their supply chain. So, could they continue to be un-sustainable for the time being? Sustainability Reporting is a good thing. I have personally completed a GRI 3.1 for a construction SME – and it brought up various questions for the business. The Directors took the results and implemented change (for the better). Some other skeptics will think its a waste of time, effort and money. What do you think? The ability of the construction industry to innovate in order to improve its practice has been widely debated over the years. As more and more organisations in other sectors, globally, are addressing 21st century consumer challenges: encompassing fair-trade, ethically sourced and more recycled products; and are reporting on their corporate responsibility performance (such as Marks and Spencer’s Plan A, The Co-operative, The Body Shop etc), isn’t it about time the construction industry followed suit? What really needs to change for the construction to progressively and sustainably improve its position in terms of being ‘responsible’. Do we report our responsibility work? Do we measure how much we save? Source responsibly? Or it is all a PR exercise?
How could we be truly responsible ? |