Hello friends,
Recently, as part of the AIA 2030 working group discussion – a topic came to light that was a conversation among (I believe) the SDL subset of our community, on a topic that is my personal obsession and daily focus – so I wanted to pipe up and share thoughts. BUT I want to respect the safe space, so if those of you in SDL want to keep this conversation amongst yourselves only (and find any of what I share useful) – please feel free to cut and paste it into your own listserv!!
For those of us not in the SDL list – this is the essence of the post:
“Does anyone share the same feeling of stagnation? We are supposed to hit 80% pEUI reduction now and working towards 90% mark, but I don’t see it happening for majority of our projects, even the “right” ones that we implemented integrative design process & iterative energy modeling. I am wondering whether anyone would be willing to share their secrete sauce that pushes projects over the hump.”
I feel compelled to chime in because this has become the exact heart of the focus of SPI’s work in the past 5 years….instead of writing paragraphs (partially because there are a few different reasons for this!) I’ll ask a few questions…
(these questions should apply to firms of all sizes and scopes even if my wording isn’t precise and even though there are obviously differences in implementation!)
- Has the firm-wide commitment been translated from executive level pronouncements down to every single person having clarity as to how their role/daily activities contribute to achieving the goal?
- How do you know if all project teams in the firm are ‘doing it’ (setting goals effectively, tracking, etc)? And if so, is there support for teams that are struggling?
- Does your firm have (effective) feedback loops to learn from your ongoing work so that you can continuously improve (and not repeat the same things that hold you back) ?
Related to this – if you are an AIA 2030 Signatory firm – do you leverage the DDX data (of your firm and more broadly) as a feedback loop to staff (at least once per year, but ideally more)?
- Is your sustainability leadership or governance (whatever you call it) somehow embedded throughout your firm (whether you have an SD, CSO or multiple of them for huge firms – in addition to that – a network of others by region/office/team – who champion and keep eyeballs on making sure it happens)?
- Are sustainability actions and deliverables embedded in or tied to your QA/QC process as appropriate?
- Does your firm have internally-driven ‘best practices’ or standards for sustainability (meaning the firm is not purely ‘reactive’, waiting for clients to ask for it)? Either based on COTE FDE or other?
- Has your firm taken the time to reflect and assess to make sure that your project delivery methodology aligns with your sustainability goals (and/or external commitments like 2030 Commitment)?
- Lastly, (a loaded question that might need a lot more explanation, but here goes anyway) has your firm incorporated critical change management strategies in the creation/roll out and implementation of this commitment (meaning was the “plan” done by a small subset of staff and then presented/rolled out or was there deeper/broader engagement of staff to set/create and figure out implementation)?
There are more questions I could ask – but if the answer to any of these is “I have no idea”, or “somewhat” or – of course – “no” then you’ll begin to see why plateaus might be happening in your firm….
The new AIA 2030 SAP (sustainability action plan guidance doc) was recently released and we (the working group) included new content on change management and other things – so take a look there, even if your firm is NOT in the program (and if you’re interested in getting your firm to become a signatory but haven’t been able to make it happen – contact me and I’ll help you figure out how to do that!)
If any of you want to have a chat offline – just ping me – I’m happy to listen, share and do a little brainstorming with you.
