Sustainability : Products & Process

Sustainability is not a new concept, the construction industry has been criticized for its poor performance to tackle the issue. in the context of project management, practices failed to implement sustainability issues, but lack of realization of its importance both to the community & organization (Stanitsas, Kirytopoulos & Leopoulos, 2021). Developing countries have lost focus of issues regarding sustainability because of the prevailed goal of economic growth.  Project Mangers lagged integrating the concept of sustainability into their practices because of the overshadowing demand of continuation of growth (Banihashemi, Hosseini, Golizadeh & Sankaran, 2017). Organizations need to take responsibility and identify the need to change to account for such global issues such as sustainability (Love, Li, Irani & Holt, 2000). For change to materialize organizations required leadership with realization of long-term strategical benefits (Lines, Sullivan, Smithwick & Mischung, 2015).

Sustainability has been acknowledged as a complex problem, not only for communities, but experts and organisations as well (Metcalf and Benn 2013).

Challenges of organizations to be sustianabile

Sustainability has been acknowledged as a complex problem, not only for communities, but experts and organisations as well (Metcalf and Benn 2013).

Sustainability : Products & Process

(Fernández-Sánchez & Rodríguez-López, 2010)

The main objective is, therefore, to propose a methodology for selecting indicators, which will be developed by all stakeholders, thus reducing the subjectivity and uncertainties of the process. The identification of every project opportunity is sought, to advance towards sustainability.

Primarily, the scope of this work is the identification, selection and prioritisation process where the greatest problems happen, since there is a great development of individual indicators with a high scientific reliability.

(Balda, 2014)

Innovation is a critical hallmark of sustainability in today’s world of change, variability and complexity. In fact some argue that only companies that make sustainability a goal of the business itself will achieve competitive advantage in the future and that doing so requires rethinking the business model as well as products, technologies, and processes (Ram, Prahalad and Rangaswami 2009).

The company is motivated by solutions, and for that reason can innovate around the product itself, the processes required to design and manufacture the product, and the human element needed to market and distribute it.

Sustainability in Infrastructure projects

Identifying the need to change requires realization but implementation change requires planning. Organizations. Developing Countries such as Oman had to respond to changes because of financial crises and persisted pandemic in the past two years, thus the value of projects prevailed in response to the current situation.  The government being both the majority owner of strategic construction projects and simultaneously the policy maker, plays a prominent role in facilitating integration of sustainability practices (Goel, Ganesh & Kaur, 2019). Because the Government of Sultanate Oman regulations in implementing sustainability is not tangible and minimal in the construction industry and is limited is standardized process of transporting waste and generating environmental impact assessment report (XXX, reference). Organizations such as OWWSC needs to initiate the process of this change to respond to the global challenges in regard of water sustainability, this becomes a social responsibility to acknowledge and develop an action plan ((Cypra, Knepper, Kytzia & Petersson, 2020)).

Identifying the method suited for the organization, customizing the plan to implement the integration and getting the support of the Project Management Team are the successful factors to integrate sustainability. Organizations acknowledge that validating and crediting the efforts encourages teams to continue the process and thus a successful delivery of projects. Thais creates a culture of a common good for a common goal and a momentum drive foe successful delivery (XXX, reference).

Sustainability Assessment in Water Infrastructure

When organizations aim to be certified in sustainability practices, they will ensure trhat teir projects are executed in  a high level of quality  to ensure alignment with the assessment criteria designed by the certification authorities.   Sustainability Certification sustainability certifications now differ vastly in scopes and applications, but, if used correctly,

this field of possibilities can provide comprehensive design tools for creators as well as valuable verification tools for investors and buyers. Sustainable building certifications are tools we can
use to measure  and document sustainability as well as support integrated design and interdisciplinary collaboration’ Sustainable building certifications help shift the industry and drive innovation by formalising design and performance criteria so that what was once innovative becomes the norm’ (Jensen et al., 2018)

Schemes for Measuring and assessing sustainability in building construction has been established since 1990s, and available for organizations to benchmark and strategize around the criteria developed. because of infrastructure projects diversity, complexity and unique characteristics of each project, this caused a limited number of exiting assessment criteria’s that serve the field and others are under development (Cypra, Knepper, Kytzia & Petersson, 2020). Due to Lack of legal framework for organizations such as OWWSC need assessments or indicators to bench mark their strategy plan for sustainability-oriented developments.

The guide of Sustainable Certification (Jensen et al., 2018, p35) have compared 12 well internationally acknowledged certifications, but none is applicable for infrastructure projects. Thus PDD whill be limited in creating indicators for the buildings wich constitute of XX% of the full projects. FODIC (https://fidic.org/node/5943) has identified Sustainable RATING & CERTIFICATION TOOLS applicable for infrastructure.

Presley & Meade (2010) have also addressed the need to benchmark projects using frameworks that utilize LEED standards for certification, or other relevant standard certifications for sustainability such as BREEAM, CABA, CASBEE, and green globe depending on location and preference.

(Cypra, Knepper, Kytzia & Petersson, 2020)

A total of eight assessment schemes is considered below. Focus is on project assessment as opposed to water policy or general water resources management and on schemes for multiple use instead of schemes developed within and for one specific case study. Four of them are interdisciplinary schemes, applicable to a wide range of infrastructure measures. They are common schemes, which also permit international application. Care was taken that these schemes were developed independently of each other by different institutions. Although coming from different parts of the world, all originate in industrialized countries.

The other four schemes are specialized in water infrastructure. These are divided equally between the fields of urban water management and hydraulic engineering. Two schemes per sector are considered. The schemes in this group can only be examples, representing an almost endless number of schemes for very specific questions and regions. They were identified in order to represent a big variety of development backgrounds (large and small research projects, multistakeholder process), state of development (new to established) and types of alternatives covered (technologies, project alternatives or performance with regard to a reference level). For all schemes data availability and independence of developing institutions were prerequisites. Most assessment schemes draw up a catalogue of various criteria, which are evaluated individually for the respective (construction) project using one or more indicators depending on the available data. The criteria depict the various impacts of the project. They are often clustered to form criteria groups or categories. However, the schemes considered do not use the same terms for the different grouping levels. In order to guarantee a good readability, the terms “criteria”, “criteria group” and “category” are used in this article