If you have been wondering about the Contractor Commitment, we have an update for you!
Several weeks ago, the subgroup leaders and the Steering Committee members gathered to agree on a basic structure for the Commitment. The idea was to align the basic expectations around issues like how many tiers there would be, what would be disclosed, what level of compliance would be expected to particpate etc.—essentially, all those issues we discussed at the last Summit but didn't fully resolve. We felt having consensus on these issues was needed for the subgroups to complete their section of the Commitment for our July Summit (now online).
So for those who don't already have access, this statement was the result:
The guidance that the subgroups are putting together for Water, Waste, Health, and Carbon will become a set of publicly available sustainability guidelines for any contractor to apply across its projects. These will generally be organized in three tiers—good, better, and best—so that companies with different levels of proficiency in sustainability can identify next steps and find areas for improvement.
Companies can also commit to the guidelines, a.k.a “The Contractor Commitment,” which will signify that the company is attempting to apply the guidance in each category at whatever tier the company chooses. Committed companies must share learnings annually with the Sustainable Construction Leaders network, in the form of case studies, anecdotal experiences, or implementation tools.
We intend that the Contractor Commitment will foster a supportive community where we can develop tools and prioritize actions that have the largest impact. Simultaneously, we’ll be aligning the way that contractors track and measure progress towards the goal of environmental sustainability. In future iterations of the Commitment, the SCL group may select targeted performance metrics for “Committed” companies to anonymously report to SCL annually in order to gauge industry progress on priority initiatives.
If you have any questions, please feel free to post in this chain. Otherwise, we hope this gives the subgroups more direction as you wrap up your work. Reminder to the subgroups that we would like to have a final version of your section of the CC by the first or second week of June. Our goal is for SCLers to be able to introduce the full CC to their companies before the Summit so that we can gather first impressions and strategize together about getting buy-in.