Integrating Sustainability Into Major Projects. Wayne McPhee
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Pipelines (water, sewage, oil)
Rail lines
Public transportation (subways, rapid transit)
In many ways, linear infrastructure projects are similar to standard infrastructure projects except that they will have multiple stakeholders and a greater reach of environmental and social impacts along the route. This raises the complexity of integrating sustainability into the project because many communities will be impacted, and there will be both winners and losers along the route of the infrastructure. They can bring a flow of goods, services, and people that stimulate the local economy. At the same time, linear infrastructure can bring social disruptions, noise, and pollution. Integrating sustainability into these projects can help to better manage both negative and positive impacts.
Energy Facilities
Another type of infrastructure project is an energy facility that is used to create electricity for the grid or thermal energy for district heating, including:
Thermal power plant (coal, oil, natural gas)
Renewable energy (wind or solar farm)
Hydroelectric facility
Nuclear power plant
Energy facilities have unique challenges related to location selection. There is a balance between putting the facility near the people who will use the energy but far enough away to mitigate impacts from the energy production. The selection of an ideal project location could look at the best location from an energy production perspective (close to water for cooling or best wind/ solar resource), minimization of energy transmission requirements, availability of local labor, environmental impacts, risk and disaster response, and climate resilience.
Energy facility projects will often include a related linear infrastructure project, such as power lines. These further complicate the challenges of integrating sustainability. Like infrastructure projects, energy facility project teams need to keep in mind the difference between the overall benefit of the energy facility versus the local impacts to the environment and people living in the local community.
Industrial Facilities
The development of large industrial facilities has many of the same challenges as infrastructure projects but has the additional challenge in that the project is typically for the benefit of a corporation rather than a government project that will provide a public benefit. The wide range of industrial facilities include:
Chemical plants
Refineries
Smelters
Large manufacturing facilities
Industrial facilities have a number of unique challenges, such as choosing a location that balances access to infrastructure (roads, rail lines, ports, water, and power), availability of skilled local labor, environmental impacts, and climate resilience. Large industrial facilities often include their own infrastructure projects within the overall project such as pipelines, road and rail transport, marine ports, water treatment, power plants, and landfills.
Resource Extraction
Resource extraction can include both nonrenewable and renewable resource projects where there is a large impact on the local community and environment, such as a new forestry development. Resource projects include:
Mining and quarrying
Off-shore oil and gas facilities
On-shore oil and gas drilling and fracking
Forestry
Resource extraction projects have a number of unique challenges associated with the depletion of finite resources, royalties for access to the resources, and managing within the constraints of the location of the resource as opposed to being able to select a location for the facility. Project sites are often in remote areas where the potential for large impacts on the local community is high both from a positive perspective (jobs, skills development, and economic development) and from a negative perspective (social disruption, environmental damage, waste management, and impacts on health).
Resource extraction projects often include their own infrastructure projects within the overall project such as pipelines, road and rail transport, marine ports, water treatment, power plants, waste disposal, and landfills. Resource extraction may also incorporate large industrial projects like mineral processing facilities at a mine site.
2.3 Types of Project Structures
Major projects are typically delivered by a large team of employees, external consultants, and contractors who work together to design and deliver the project. There are a variety of project structures that can be used to organize the team and manage who is responsible for which task.
The “owner” (also called the proponent) of a major project is the organization that is ultimately responsibility for the successful delivery of the project and controls the project financials. The owner could be a government, a development agency, a corporation, a partnership, or a cooperative of organizations.
The owner will decide on the project structure that is best suited for project delivery. Depending on the structure, the project team will span different organizations with varying goals and objectives. The project structure will have a significant impact on overall project success and will have a significant influence on how sustainability is managed and how successful it will be. There is no single answer, but each project structure will have advantages and disadvantages that need to be managed to create the most successful project.
Some of the common project structures include:
Self-perform
Engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM)
Engineer-procure-construct (EPC) or design-build
Design-build-own-operate (DBOO)
Design-finance-build-own-operate (DFBOO)
Public-private partnership (P3)
People-public-private partnership (P4)
Self-Perform
In a self-perform structure, the owner manages all aspects of the project themselves and hires contractors and consultants as required to deliver specific pieces of work that the owner's team cannot handle themselves. This structure is typical where the project is an expansion of an existing facility or a new facility for a large organization that has a strong capacity for project delivery.
A self-perform project structure can be positive from a sustainability integration perspective as there is little to no disconnect between the goals of the owner and the goals of the project delivery team. The down side is that self-perform project teams can become isolated from emerging trends and may not be fully up to speed on new technologies and new ways of delivering projects. Self-perform teams should be open to innovation from contractors and suppliers so that they can deliver successful projects.
Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Management (EPCM)
One of the most common project delivery structures is engineering, procurement, and construction management (EPCM), where the owner hires an engineering consulting firm to complete the major design and delivery of project components but maintains control over financial management, earning, and maintaining local community support, and most of the sustainability management activities related to regulatory approvals. The EPCM consultant will typically work in close alignment with the owner's team, which provides final approval of major decisions and deliverables.
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