FIDIC's Draft Business Guidelines

 Bernd Kordes

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Stakeholder Concept
3. FIDIC’s Guiding Principles
4. Sustainability Screening
5. Management Systems
6. Acknowledgement

1. Introduction

In June 1990 the FIDIC Executive Committee approved the FIDIC policy statement on Consulting Engineers and the Environment. Four years later in 1994 the Guide for Actions for Consulting Engineers and the Environment went into print. Ten years after the approval of the Policy Statement on the Environment you hold in your hands the strategy paper „Sustainable Development in the Consulting Engineering Industry". Just one year later, right in time for the FIDIC Conference 2001 in Montreux, Switzerland, you will be able to hold in your hands the Business Guideline for Sustainable Development in Consultancy Services. This is a promise. There are two reasons why we are moving so fast within the Task Force.

1. We are not developing a set of documents from scratch. We are – as Rolf Sägesser has pointed out in his figure „FIDIC’s Actions and Documents" – now social and economic objectives to the existing environmental objectives as integral part the sustainability policy. This means we are adding new ideas to an existing concept and therefore we can be much faster.
2. The discussion on sustainable development and the expectations from all sides towards visible actions of FIDIC are very high and therefore FIDIC has to move fast.

Consulting firms, specifically larger ones, are not only dealing with their clients. They deal with many other stakeholders as well. Among these stakeholders are the general public and public bodies, investors, employees and of course other suppliers. Figure 1 illustrates consulting engineering firms and their relation to the various stakeholders.

Figure 1: Consultancy services and stakeholder relations

The client:

Without question the client is and will be the most important stakeholder today and in the future. The client, usually the owner of the project, pays for our services and therefore defines type and quality of our services. If the client requires services for projects which are not sustainable or which in the worst case are damaging the environment or will raise social unrest, we have to advise our clients to change the scope of the project or even to abandon it. Therefore one of the most important task of FIDIC’s activities in sustainable development in general is:

• to promote sustainable development to our clients and to convince them that consulting engineers can support them to improve the sustainability of their investment.

General public:

Without question it is in the best interest of all our member firms and member associations to enhance the image of consulting engineers. In many countries the services of consulting engineers are frequently considered to be commodities. Still too often the public finger points to consulting engineers being associated with unsustainable projects.

Investors:

Rolf Sägesser and William Wallace already indicated that sustainability is increasingly becoming a central focus of institutional investors. The idea of environmental or "clean" investments has become highly attractive in the financial world. Numerous investment funds, specializing in environmentally sound companies are offered today.

As consulting companies continuously grow and go public, it is increasingly important, not only for the individual company, but also for the industry as whole, to report on sustainable management systems and other sustainability indicators.

Employees:

In numerous countries a lack of skilled labor, specifically engineers, is expected in the future. Therefore we will see growing competition between enterprises to recruit skilled staff. Those of our firms that have sustainability integrated into their management systems and reporting tools to the public will definitely be more attractive to new employees than others.

Suppliers:

As a parallel to environmental management systems the supply chain will also be integrated into sustainability management systems.

3. FIDIC’s Guiding Principles

The draft business guideline defines in more detail the guiding principles in overall terms:

• all engineers should utilize the best available technology
• it is essential that all projects go through a sustainability screening

Professor Medem, President of WFEO, and William Wallace of CH2M Hill have presented in yesterday mornings forum many aspects of sustainable development. In this guideline, you will find the key principles of environmental, sociological and economical concerns in projects and programs presented in a comprehensive way in this guideline. Among these guiding principles are the following key items:

• the present business guideline should be considered as a further improvement of the earlier Guide for Actions on the Environment
• the consulting engineering practice should support the implementation of international agreements on global environmental issues
• the issue of improving eco-efficiency should be taken into account by consulting engineers in all their projects
• clients should be advised to make project cycles more flexible through the use of social analysis and participatory approaches
• public participation should be promoted in the whole project cycle
• the interrelationships between social, socio-economic and environmental aspects should be recognized by the engineer as well as the client.

As mentioned above one of the key principles is the concept of sustainability screening which is presented in more detail in the business guideline. In a project oriented approach to integration of sustainable development the following step by step approach is suggested in the discussion process with our clients:

• Categorizing

The project should be categorized according to its requirements for sustainable development efforts by using a checklist. This checklist will be an addendum to the business guideline.

• Sustainable Development Screening

In the early stages of the project all essential relations to environmental, social and economic aspects should be assessed. Again the above mentioned checklist can be used.

• Specification of services

In the discussion process the sustainable development objectives of the project should be defined together with the client.

• Project planning

The above defined objectives should be incorporated into the overall specification of the project. For larger, multidisciplinary projects a sustainable development coordinator and other relevant specialists should be selected for the project team.

• Performance of services and follow up

During project implementation a continuous process of review and possibly revision of the scope should be applied.

The above described activities number 1 to 4 should preferably be performed prior to signing the service contract with the client. This is the tricky part of the process. Usually we reply to terms of reference, defined by the client. Since most of the projects are awarded on a competitive basis, it is usually not possible to discuss with the client on an individual basis changes of the scope of the project at this stage. Once the contract has been signed, changes of the scope are quite often difficult to undertake. Therefore the important task for FIDIC, national associations and engineering firms is to convince clients that the procurement phase has to be changed in a way to allow the above described process. Our aim as consulting engineers must be to be more involved in the scoping of the project.

An important challenge for our profession is the credibility with stakeholder groups as described in chapter 2.

As William Wallace has pointed out industry is recognizing that sustainability is an essential component of competitive strategy. We, as consulting engineers, have to recognize that we are part of the industry. We now have to understand that pressure on companies and representative organizations to become more transparent and accountable in their operations is increasing. Voluntary reporting is one strategy to meet these expectations. Corporate environmental reports are a standard tool for most multinational corporations today. In a few years corporate sustainability reports will replace environmental reports.

Within the business guidelines the following management policies and systems are addressed:

• A statement with a strong commitment from the top-management, usually the CEO.
• A corporate sustainability report, including the latest version of the companies environmental policy or even sustainability policy.
• A description of the companies environmental and/or sustainability management system.
• A clear definition of the responsible person for environmental and sustainability matters.
• Integration of sustainability factors into a companies research and development efforts.
• A clear policy on reporting to a companies stakeholders.

We as members of the consulting engineering industry should develop individual reporting standards for firms. This shall flow into a report of our associations addressing sustainability efforts of its member firms. This again than will allow FIDIC as a worldwide umbrella organization to report on a global basis in an accountable and visible way, which activities we undertake towards sustainability. We now represent the global consulting engineering industry.

6. Acknowledgement

The draft business guideline as it stands today has been a joint effort of numerous parties. Not all of them can be mentioned at this point but major input has been given by Ike van der Putte, Netherlands; Cecilie Bjørnskov-Johansen, Denmark; Barbara Gamper and Rolf Sägesser, Switzerland and Pierre Patry, Canada.