Peter Elliott

Approaches to building sustainability into strategic evaluation/strategic assessment

Peter Elliott
Senior Principal – Sustainability,
URS Australia and Donna Perschke,
URS, WA

Abstract:
Over the last few years URS has worked on projects with both the private and government sectors that have considered the integration of sustainability in to both project planning and operations. In undertaking this work, a picture has emerged in terms of the lack of integration of sustainability into strategic planning and evaluation, or of a consistent use of strategic assessment for sustainability. A focus has remained on sustainability at the operational or tactical level within many projects with sustainability assessment often seen as performance against a simple checklist.

Existing business as usual decision making frameworks or structures have prevented the necessary integration of sustainability opportunities into strategic planning and evaluation.

Governments are now acknowledging this gap and new requirements are emerging such as Infrastructure Australia’s strategic assessments of proposed infrastructure. A number of approaches have been used or are emerging in undertaking the necessary strategic assessment that incorporates sustainability principles. This presentation will discuss what sustainability assessment could be, how sustainability assessment has different connotations across business/government and for approvals and discuss some of the difficulties in trying to solve a range of issues at different levels within the same
framework/project.

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