In a world facing urgent environmental challenges, Dr Gretchen Gagel explores how leaders in the construction industry can be a driving force for sustainable progress – balancing the needs of people with the demands of the planet.
By Dr Gretchen Gagel.
Last month, I attended the Engineering and Construction Community (ECC) conference with 900 construction industry leaders at the beautiful Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs. This is a special place to me, as I have spent decades visiting, from learning to ski here as a four-year-old to being inducted into the National Academy of Construction here in 2021. As I was riding down from Denver, I noticed a scar on the beautiful mountain and foothills landscape. Then I began to think about the ‘green construction’ theme of this edition’s feature, and a vision came to me of looking at the Earth from far away. What will it look like in 50 years with nearly 10 billion of us here? What scars will we see? What sacrifices and trade-offs will we have made to balance the needs of humans with the environment? We need the mining industry to secure resources like tungsten, which is vital in medical devices and electronics. How do we balance that need with care for the Earth?
I believe that construction industry leadership will become even more critical in solving the challenges civilisation will face in the coming decades, and that we need to be prepared to step up. I think of the blue highways now being constructed in Doha to combat rising temperatures. Our ability to lead with creative thinking will shape the future of society.
In the May edition of Inside Construction, I shared highlights of my Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) Industry Trends keynote speech, during which I shared the results of my interviews with 40 global construction leaders on the topics of artificial intelligence, sustainability and inclusion. Thoughts shared on sustainability ranged from, ‘Environmental, social and governance (ESG) pulls it together, stating how you are really measuring it in an objective way so that you can continue to improve; we will stay on the path because it is the right thing to do’, to, ‘Most owners have huge sustainability commitments, but it’s not coming through to the actual capital projects; it’s the dirty little secret’. We are definitely seeing a wide range of thinking on sustainability in our industry.
Here are the steps I believe we need to take as an industry to contribute to the viability of our planet:
- Create a sustainability culture: In the same way we have created a safety culture, we need to create a culture of sustainability and embed this thinking into everything we do. For example, I have made many personal decisions to eliminate my use of single-use plastics, such as ensuring I have my own water bottle and not using hotel single-use plastic products. It’s hard. Over 900 million toothpaste tubes are thrown away globally each year – think about the size of that pile. We influence our safety culture by talking about safety and measuring safety behaviours. I see the same progress with ESG efforts, but more needs to be done to embed sustainability thinking in the culture of our teams, our organisations, and our industry. We need to ensure that sustainability is valued by our organisations.
- Set sustainability goals: While at the ECC conference, I spoke with a senior leader in the oil and gas industry and mentioned my frustration that only about 4 per cent of people in construction trades are women. His response was immediate: “Not on our jobs; we have 13 per cent.” He knew the number – and that impressive precision made me reflect on the targets that we set ourselves. How much waste are we producing from our construction projects? What percentage of that waste could be recycled? How many groundbreaking innovations is your team coming up with each year that will markedly shift the way we think about construction and the environment? What gets measured, gets done.
- Develop sustainability strategies and tactics: To achieve goals, we need the right strategies and tactics in place to move the ball down the field. We need bold innovation. Do we have a strategy to train our people in design thinking or other innovation methodologies? We need collaboration. Do we have strategies in place to break down the barriers to collaboration in our industry? Only through the development and effective execution of the right strategies and tactics will we make progress.
- Lead conversations: If people hear leaders talking about certain topics, those topics become important to others. What message are you sending to the team about sustainability? Yes, it is hard when we have many priorities – profitability, return on assets, our people, our clients. I believe “our planet” should be in the top 10. These conversations will give people the skills they need to have what can sometimes be difficult conversations on sustainability and other challenging topics.
- Don’t fake it: I mentioned in an earlier article hearing the term “green hushing” at an International Women’s Forum conference in Helsinki last year. This term refers to the fact that many senior leaders do not believe their sustainability goals are achievable and are therefore downplaying these goals. We cannot afford to put unactionable plans in place that erode our stakeholders’ confidence in our intent and actions.
I am certain that each of you could contribute more steps we need to take as construction industry leaders to embed sustainability thinking into our industry. It begins with thinking long-term about the health of society. At Apple’s major product launch event in 2023, the company released a video entitled 2030 Status, Mother Nature, Apple. I am not endorsing this company. What I am endorsing is the message of the video, in which actor Octavia Spencer, playing Mother Nature, demands accountability to the planet.
I think of my future grandchildren and what they will say to me in my later years. What report card will they give us for ‘green construction’, defined as creating and using the built environment in a way that is as friendly as possible to the environment? I believe it is worth considering.
Dr Gretchen Gagel is chair of Brinkman Construction (US) and a member of the Global Risk Committee for GHD Engineering, the National Academy of Construction (US), the Construction Industry Culture Taskforce (AUS), and the Associated General Contractor (AGC) of America National Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Gretchen is passionate about leading change in the construction industry and developing its future leaders. You can hear more from Gretchen on her Spotify podcast, “Greatness”.
