In the film Blade Runner (at least the original that I’m familiar with), Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, had a job to do.

From Wikipedia:

The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered organic robots called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are manufactured by the all-powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as other mega manufacturers around the world. Their use on Earth is banned, and replicants are exclusively used for dangerous, menial or leisure work on Earth’s off-world colonies. Replicants who defy the ban and return to Earth are hunted down and “retired” by police special operatives known as “blade runners”. The plot focuses on a brutal and cunning group of recently escaped replicants hiding in Los Angeles and the burnt out expert blade runner, Rick Deckard, who reluctantly agrees to take on one more assignment to hunt them down.

As project managers, we’ve also got jobs to do.

Unless we don’t.

Well, thanks to green energy efforts – and in particular, green energy projects, there should be more opportunities for project managers.  Case in point (yes, another ‘blade’ reference) – a recent posting by the energy collective talks about a huge number of green energy jobs coming to Canada, in particular, to Ontario, thanks to huge efforts on solar and wind power projects.

The Ontario government discusses this in detail here in their Green Energy Act in which Ontario has set its intent (and call to arms?) to be the “North American green energy leader”.  Here are the Green Energy Act’s main points:

• Spark growth in clean and renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, hydro, biomass and biogas in Ontario.
• Create the potential for savings and better managed household energy expenditures through a series of conservation measures.
• Create 50,000 jobs for Ontarians in its first three years.

They want to give Ontario the edge.

The key is the 50,000 jobs.  These are project-focused efforts.  So there will be a lot of work for project teams.  And so, there will be many jobs for project managers.

The reference to Blade Runner is mainly from this story in which Siemens will be building a turbine blade factory in southern Ontario.  The project managers overseeing the manufacture and distribution of the product from these factories are today’s blade runners.

The moral of this story?

It underlines our assertion that project managers should be learning about sustainability, building their green vocabulary, and practicing looking through their “green lenses”. You can do that by keeping up to date with our blog here at EarthPM and of course by buying and reading our book.  It will give you an advantage in the coming years that will (we couldn’t help this, sorry) cut like a knife.

A joint post from EarthPM and TenStep:

There are many examples of projects undertaken to produce some deliverable with environmental implications. In fact, one may assert that in fact, any project, since it uses resources, has environmental implications.  This varies tremendously, based on scale and the direct impact on the environment.  One project that clearly has environmental implications is the Deepwater Horizon drilling project and what is often called “the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster”.

Important note: We do not purport to say that any specific single action or philosophy that we enumerate below would have prevented the Deepwater Horizon disaster or led to its instant cleanup.  What we do assert, however, is that taken collectively and holistically, an intense focus on green thinking would have had a tremendously positive impact on the disaster.

Many companies are incorporating environmental considerations into their thinking about the deliverables of their projects, and some are even integrating this thinking into the operation of that deliverable. However, are they truly following green project management processes to assist them in their decision making process throughout the project and beyond? We assert that Green Project Management can be applied to all projects. Even those that may not appear to be creating a deliverable with an environmental impact still have environmental aspects that can affect their decision making (for example, even if one is developing a new software release there are decisions to be made that affect the environment – decisions such as meeting policies, method of duplicating the software, energy considerations for the servers involved, and so on).

Both TenStep and EarthPM believe that the environment should be considered in any project – and therefore in an organization\’s project management processes. We also think that doing this is not only the right thing to do but that it will benefit the organization.  Both organizations have published various communications which provide thought leadership on this subject (refer to www.green-pm.com and www.earthpm.com.

We’ve decided to apply examples from Green Project Management to the challenges faced (mainly by BP) in the Gulf Coast oil spill. The main thrust of Green Project Management is not that every decision will be made differently or “in favor of” the environment, but instead that each project needs to consider the environment in its decision making process.  This of course includes the conservation of the project’s resources, which should already be part of the project manager’s mission.

What we are suggesting here are some ways in which Green Project Management may have provided BP with key insights that,  taken holistically,  may have done some of the following (in the abstract, anyway):

• Prevented the disaster or at least limited the extent of the damage
• Made it easier to repair once it happened
• Allowed BP and the other responsible parties to deal more skillfully with key stakeholders.

Let’s consider the example of Green Project Management in completing a project to define, develop, and implement the oil rig. Note that some of the examples below may not directly apply to the Deepwater Horizon project, but are provided as examples to demonstrate the principles of Green Project Management.

Project Charter

Have you ever seen a Project Charter template that has a section on environmental concerns?  It’s rare now, but we predict it will become much more prevalent.  Perhaps if the Charter for the Deepwater Horizon project included a detailed section on environmental impact, it would have raised the awareness of the project team and associated stakeholders with regards to improved means to prevent, mitigate (with activities such as relief wells), and respond effectively to spills.  A charter written with an environmental view also may have allowed BP to focus more effectively on the clean up process, because decisions like the purchase of Ocean Therapy boats (see this posting) would be indicated at a Charter level.

BP may also have identified a need to further evaluate its vendors/partners experience in prior, similar projects. Lastly, it may have resulted in a need to further invest in considering alternate approaches with various stakeholder groups, to assure the necessary buy-in prior to undertaking the project.

Project Scope Management and Project Integration Management

If the oil rig required additional drills, or a change in the materials used to create the drill or the oil platform, then scope change management process should have been invoked. Note that the latter could have been a requirements change, part of project scope management. When invoking scope change management, the environmental impact could have been considered, in addition to the impact on all other project management processes (schedule, cost, quality, risk, procurement, etc.) as evaluated through integrated change control. Perhaps a change in materials requirements would result in procuring materials from a different vendor. We discuss this further in the section on procurement management.

Project Management Plan – An Environmental Management Plan component

Existing BP environmental policies – which we’re sure that BP has in great number, considering their size and experience – need to have been used as an input to the project\’s Environmental Management Plan, identifying the environmental policies applicable to the project and the sustainability requirements for the project.

Requirements Management

When gathering requirements for the oil rig, BP could have reviewed its defined project Environmental Plan (linked to the company’s parent Environment Management Plan) and confirmed that the requirements for the oil rig would adhere to the plan. Making it clear to the project team that this linkage exists is a way to reinforce what should be elemental to the team’s behavior but sometimes can slip behind other priorities if not kept in the forefront.

Much has been said about the regulating agency, the MMS and their oversight (or lack thereof) of oil companies.  Ostensibly, the MMS should have been putting proper requirements on the companies doing the drilling.  As is the case with good project management practices, however, the vendor themselves has to ask the question: ‘who are the stakeholders, and what are their requirements?’ Perhaps with this mindset and a well-conceived (excuse the pun) and ethically-responsible environmental management policy – not just at a corporate level, but at a project level – an increased focus on both preventing the spill from happening and being able to effectively clean up after, would have resulted in a more thorough collection and communication of these environmental requirements before beginning to drill.

Cost Management

When estimating project costs, did BP consider costs for implementing any risk response strategies?

As mentioned in the Charter section, one could look at the Kevin Costner-funded Ocean Therapy centrifuge boats as an example.  For a relatively small investment, BP would be buying not only an easy way to clean up after a possible spill, but would gain valuable positive PR by aligning with the high-profile actor and his efforts to protect the Gulf. Perhaps it is too optimistic to think that the oil companies would have identified oil cleanup technology as a part of risk-response, but it certainly is within the realm of reason that cleanup technology and costs would be included in risk contingency plans (the plans that are put into effect if the original risk plan fails).

In fact, a recent news story shows that – although late – the oil industry has pooled their resources and is collaborating on oil spill response.  See this Reuters news story.

Identifying the costs related to the project\’s environmental aspects allows the project manager to discuss the costs with the Sponsor and determine whether the cost is more than offset by the project results. The financial costs of the realized threat are so high in this case – in the tens of billions of dollars and in fact the continued life of the company itself – that a different type of thinking has to be applied.  As is obvious now, BP could have invested more upfront to further mitigate or avoid the risk of spilling oil into the ocean. Even with Green Project Management, if BP\’s decision was not to invest more in a risk response strategy, then perhaps they should have estimated the contingent costs required for a clean-up activity as they are currently undertaking. See the risk management section.

Communication Management – Identify Stakeholders

How thorough was the stakeholder plan and ultimately the Communication Plan prepared by BP for this project? This project appears to have many key stakeholder groups, both internal and external. Was every major stakeholder group – internal BP, NGOs, government, industries/associations (e.g., fishing along the Gulf Coast), etc – identified and considered? Were they all included in the communications as BP developed and implemented the oil rig?

What type of communications plan would allow BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg to say “we care about the small people.\”?  We assert that with properly indentified stakeholders and a thoughtful stakeholder management plan, this likely would not have happened.

Risk Management – Probability and Impact Assessment

Really, this entire incident comes down to the way BP and others managed project risk.  The context is greater than risk management, as you can tell by the number of other headers in this document.  But it really comes down to project risk management. With “greenthink”, risks may be evaluated differently.

If we consider environmental factors that had never been applied, then BP may have identified the risk of the blowout as an extremely low probability of occurrence (based on prior experience, faith in the blowout preventer, competitors\’ experience, etc) but a very high impact when considering the environmental impact.  In fact, a very similar accident occurred in 1979 the Ixtoc.  In that case, the blowout preventer also failed.  So there was a precedent for this type of failure.  It could not be considered a “failsafe” solution.  The assessment could have also included the environmental impact of a blowout that occurred in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969.  Was their assessment of the impact high enough?

With such a low probability, you would have to have a huge impact for the product of probability and impact to give a risk score worth pursuing.  We assert that the probability was considered to be zero and that the impact was tremendously undervalued.  Without considering the environment aspect in project management process of risk management, the product was low enough that the risk mitigation and response was inadequate. As we noted above, Green Project Management may not result in a different decision. However, we are discussing this event because it truly depicts the importance of considering the environment and making sure that all project-related risks are properly identified, quantified, and addressed with the Sponsor and key stakeholders.

Procurement Management

When planning and executing procurement activities for this project, did BP:

• Validate that their vendors/partners (such as Halliburton) met their environmental requirements?
• Understand how their vendors/partners would align to BP\’s environmental policies and project approach?
• Request feedback from vendors/partners on how they would align with environmental policies?
• Audit that the vendors/partners were actually following the environmental policies?
• Audit that the deliverables met the defined environmental criteria?

Summary

These examples have been provided to demonstrate how Green Project Management could assist in incorporating environmental thinking in any project. These scratch the surface in factoring the environment into project management processes. Perhaps BP accomplished these and more. Then again, perhaps a more structured approach to including the environment in all project management processes would have uncovered some of the issues and led to some very different decisions during the project, prior to deciding to drill more than five thousand feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico.

We assert that the point of Green Project Management is to view projects through an “environmental lens”. Perhaps, if that happened, some decisions would be made differently, with very different results.

About the Authors

TenStep, Inc, focuses on methodology development, training, and consulting, through its worldwide network of offices. Its focus on green project management (www.green-pm.com) was pioneered by Tom Mochal and Andrea Krasnoff.

Tom Mochal, PMP is President of TenStep, Inc., (www.TenStep.com). Mochal is an expert instructor and consultant on project management, project management offices, development lifecycle, portfolio management, application support, people management and other related areas. He was awarded 2005 Distinguished Contribution Award from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

Andrea Krasnoff, PMP is Director of TenStep Consulting Services. Andrea has more than 20 years experience in project management, program management, portfolio management, and PMOs. She is the Director of TenStep Consulting Services and is a key contributor to the TenStep Green-PM model.

EarthPM is dedicated to the “intersection of green and project management and is a collaboration between Rich Maltzman and Dave Shirley, co-authors of Green Project Management, CRC Press.  EarthPM provides the critical link between project management and environmentalism to increase awareness amongst project managers of the power they have to improve the greenality and effectiveness of their projects – whether or not they are directly involved with the environment.  Through their website EarthPM.com, Rich and Dave provide a variety of blog postings and resources, as well as consulting and course development services in Project Management and Green Project Management.

Rich Maltzman, MSIE, PMP, has more than 30 years of project management experience managing projects, leading project managers, consulting and teaching in Europe, the Middle East and the United States.  Currently, Rich is Senior Manager, Learning and Professional Advancement, at the Global Program Management Office of a major telecom concern. He is currently co-authoring a book with Ranjit Biswas, PMP, entitled “The Fiddler on the Project”, and posts regularly on his blog, Scope Crêpe, http://scopecrepe.blogspot.com.

Dave Shirley, MBA, PMP, has more than 30 years of project management experience in environmental and public health, and the telecommunications industry leading projects, project teams, managing project managers, consulting, teaching and course development.  He is currently developing a graduate course in Environmental Issues.  Dave is currently writing a book on project management for health care professionals.

The press release below is jointly released from the New England Patriots (American Football team) and the deploying companies, but here’s a real example what we call a green-by-definition project….

FOXBOROUGH, Mass (August 2, 2010) – In a ceremony overlooking Gillette Stadium and The Hall at Patriot Place presented by Raytheon, Constellation Energy (NYSE: CEG), Evergreen Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: ESLR) and Patriot Place announced the completion of a photovoltaic power system that will generate approximately 525 kilowatts of clean, renewable solar power at Patriot Place, The Kraft Group’s shopping, dining and entertainment destination adjacent to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.

U.S. Representative Barney Frank and Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles joined The Kraft Group Chairman & CEO Robert Kraft and officials from Patriot Place, Constellation Energy and Evergreen Solar for the announcement.

“When someone of [Robert Kraft's] stature as a business leader and promoter of economic development shows you that the environmental movement can be not just a chore, but a source of economic strength and growth, I hope others pay attention,” said Congressman Frank during the program.

“This is good business and the greening of our environment is important for our children and grandchildren,” said Kraft.

“Through Governor Patrick’s leadership, Massachusetts is on track for a 20-fold increase in solar power over a four-year period,” said Bowles. “This new 525-kilowatt array at Patriot Place is another chapter in the Commonwealth’s solar success story – which has added jobs and companies across the Massachusetts economy. I congratulate Patriot Place, Constellation Energy and Evergreen Solar for a project that will have a huge public profile throughout football season and beyond.”

Constellation Energy’s subsidiary, Constellation Energy’s Projects & Services Group, began installing the system in November 2009. It now supplies approximately 30 percent of Patriot Place’s power and spans seven building rooftops at the complex. Among them is The Hall at Patriot Place Presented by Raytheon, an award-winning sports and entertainment experience. Photovoltaic panels on the roof of The Hall will be visible to visitors from inside Gillette Stadium and from Patriot Place’s upper retail plaza, promoting commercial applications of solar power.

“We are pleased to announce the completion of this beautiful new solar facility at Patriot Place,” said Michael Smith, Constellation Energy Sr. Vice President of Green Initiatives. “We’re confident that this highly visible project will promote solar power and its viability in states like Massachusetts, and hope that it spurs similar solar projects throughout New England.”

The system’s 2,556 solar panels will generate more than 625,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually. They were supplied by Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar. “We’re thrilled that Patriot Place has chosen Evergreen Solar for this highly-visible solar installation,” said Scott Gish, Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Evergreen Solar. “As a company producing solar panels that deliver more electricity with less impact on the environment including the smallest carbon footprint, we feel we align perfectly with the environmental goals of Patriot Place while demonstrating the viability of solar power to the many patrons and fans traveling through this incredible complex.”

Constellation Energy’s Projects & Services Group estimates that the system will generate more than 12 million kilowatt hours of electricity over 20 years, and prevent the release of more than 8,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  That is the equivalent of removing more than 1,600 passenger vehicles from the road for a year.  The system’s real time power output and performance can be monitored through a Web-based data acquisition system.

Under a 20-year power purchase agreement, Constellation Energy‘s Projects & Services Group will own the energy assets and sell the electricity it generates on site to Patriot Place.

“This project is a cornerstone of Patriot Place’s sustainability initiatives and we are proud that its visibility will help promote practical and cost-effective commercial applications of solar power,” said Jim Nolan, Sr. VP of Finance, Administration and Operations for Gillette Stadium/Patriot Place.

Patriot Place, which began opening in phases in 2008, was constructed utilizing sustainable design practices, including low-emitting construction materials and white roofs to facilitate heat island reduction. Patriot Place also employs an on-site wastewater re-use system that saves millions of gallons of water annually, and solar-powered trash receptacles throughout the complex reduce waste volume and energy consumption.

What was the root cause – really, the root, root cause of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster?

Let us answer that with another question.

Who owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform?

Our (quite non-scientific) survey shows that at least 7 of 10 Americans were – at a minimum – confused enough to give no answer or the wrong answer.   Worse than that, the companies involved – TransOcean, BP, and Haliburton, all seemed to quickly void themselves of ownership and responsibility once the disaster occurred.

So we assert that one of the biggest risks of all – perhaps one could call it the “parent” risk – was that the well, without clear ownership, didn’t have clear direction, clear objectives, clear identification of stakeholders, mission, everything that one needs to run a project.

Good project managers know that a project is laden with risk.  They also know that a good risk register has a list of well-formed Risk Statements, and that Risk Statements always have a component tied to project objectives.  Again, without clear objectives, risk cannot even be identified properly, and without identifying risk, you cannot analyze or treat it.

That’s the PM way of looking at it.  For another view, we provide for you a clipping from a recent editorial by William Shughart II, a senior fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

“The tragic April 20 explosion that destroyed BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 crew members, didn’t happen in a vacuum.

BP clearly is culpable. And the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, shares in the blame, for failing to exercise proper oversight.

Many other factors also contributed to the accident, however.

First among them is the important issue of ownership. BP did not own the Deepwater Horizon, but leased it from another company, Transocean. The contractual relationship between Transocean and BP created a classic “principal-agent” problem in which the duties and responsibilities of the lessor, or owner, and lessee, the renter, may not have been spelled out adequately. This is especially true with respect to the rig’s maintenance, testing of its blowout preventer, or the need for an additional backup device, known as a “blind sheer ram,” which may have been able to plug the well after the blowout preventer failed.

Ownership does matter. BP may have been more safety-conscious if it held title to the Deepwater Horizon. Transocean and BP now are at loggerheads. Many lawyers will get rich in the process of determining the extent to which BP and Transocean were negligent.

A second contributor to the disaster is the federal law limiting liability for damages caused by offshore oil spills. Although the $75 million limit can be waived in cases of proven gross negligence (and likely will be in this case), BP probably would have been far more cautious from the beginning if it knew that a major blowout could cost the company billions rather than millions. Even in 2009, with energy prices sharply down from the recession, BP reported a $14 billion profit. The slim prospect of a $75 million liability “hit” may not have even raised an eyebrow.

Third, BP may have been misled in calculating its exposure to risk by MMS computer models that predict the likely path of large-scale oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. These models, according to news reports, have not been updated since 2004 and have never included scenarios in which blowouts happen in ultra-deep waters, which the Minerals Management Service and oil industry have always considered low-probability events. After all, the last accident of any consequence at an offshore oil well in U.S. waters was more than 40 years ago, in 1969, off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif.”

The editorial goes on to criticize the White House, regulations and other agencies.  Here is a link to the full editorial.

We admire Shughart’s identification of ownership as a primary and root cause of the problem.

Watch for this in your projects.  And remember the connection between objectives and risk – as Joni Mitchell once sang, “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” .  We think Joni was singing about connecting risk to project objectives, but perhaps that’s just us…

Forgive us for taking advantage of a little bit of serendipity.

Precisely 24 hours after posting “A balanced view”, in which we implore project managers of the need to gather facts and make a decision based on rational analysis and background, an alumni magazine arrived from the University of Wollongong.  My son attended UOW as part of an international exchange program with the University of Massachusetts.

The cover story was: “Climate Change: What to Believe?”.

The story, written by scientist Dr. Helen McGregor, is a good read not only because it provides a calm, scientific view of climate change, but for project managers, it talks about something which has always fascinated me and that is the way that people (and your team members and customers, by the way, are people) react to uncertainty.  Note the portions highlighted below in green.  You will find a valuable lesson here which has NOTHING to do with climate change, and has much more to do with successfully managing a project, and that is to understand the way folks react to uncertainty and the best way to communicate under those conditions.

I have put the beginning of the story here as a teaser, but we hope and expect that you’ll read the entire story.

“As a climate scientist I am often asked if I believe in human-induced climate change. I find this a curious question: for me the science of human-induced climate change is not something one believes in but an obvious conclusion drawn from the data. But it got me thinking – where has this belief/non-belief idea come from and why is there so much confusion about climate science?

There is no doubt that climate is a complicated beast. There are multiple players – the main ones being the atmosphere, ocean, vegetation, and ice – all of which interact with each other on a variety of timescales from hours to decades to centuries and beyond. Trying to describe all the processes, and to put them in a climate model, is a tough gig. But it can and has been done. Our daily weather forecasts are based on models, and though not perfect, they’re often within a couple of degrees Celsius of the actual temperature. That’s quite an achievement when you think about it.

Importantly, the models reproduce the observed 20th Century warming. This means that at least at the global scale we do have a good handle on the climate complexity. But communicating this complexity to the public is no mean feat and scientists aren’t always the best at communicating their own science in a language that non-scientists can understand.

One of the difficulties in communicating climate science is the concept of “uncertainty”. With the vast number of processes in the climate system there are some that we understand better than others – uncertainty describes how well we know what we know. Climate scientists, having a good understanding of uncertainty, tend to downplay the state of knowledge and this can be taken by some as a reason to do nothing.

But there are many instances where we may not understand a process 100 per cent still act. For example, we know that a healthy diet and exercise reduces the risk of heart disease, yet the details of exactly which food and how much exercise are still the subject of research. Does this mean we should have an unhealthy diet and not exercise? Of course not. The same principle applies to reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. We know that there is a big problem and should get on with the process of dealing with it.”

Please read the remainder of Dr. McGregor’s story here.