Towards a sustainable infrastructure company

Engineers have an important role to play in creating a sustainable future. They occupy a pivotal position between known limits to growth, the imperative for change expressed quantitatively and practical action. It is a lack of understanding of the quantitative dimensions of sustainability that has led to campaigns such as 350.org's ‘Do the Math’ tour. This paper describes the sustainability journey of Balfour Beatty plc, and the tools and techniques that it has developed en route. It is intended as a frame of reference for engineers within infrastructure businesses, to help stimulate debate, establish priorities and shape their own sustainable future. The paper describes Balfour Beatty's progress from a position of naivety to where it scores highly on sustainability in prequalification evaluations and is able to act as a surrogate advisor to its clients when executing projects. It describes the critical dimensions of the company's approach, including how it maps onto the strategic framework for the business, governance, assurance, reporting and stakeholder engagement. The construct of sustainability continues to evolve both within and without the company, and the paper concludes with a summary of lessons learnt to date, a maturity model and a list of focus areas for future work.