We focus on projects, project management, the connection between sustainability and project management, projects, and most importantly, YOU – the project manager.

That focus includes ecological but also economic and social continuity and success – in other words, running projects that consider the long term effects of the project’s product on the enterprise financially, for its employees and customers, and for the long-term health of the planet.

We are not tree-huggers, even though the picture on the cover of our award-winning book is of a tree.

But some of our rationale for taking on our work is rooted (pun intended) in caring for our home – Earth.

And we know that there are many of you out there who are justifiably skeptics – even cynics, and deniers, when it comes to climate change.  That’s fine with us.  We are left-brained, engineer/scientist types and we like that type of questioning.  It’s what keeps innovation going.

Still, we think it’s important to keep the project managers out there up-t0-date with news and recent findings with respect to climate change.

The most recent news, unfortunately, isn’t good.  It’s downright scary.

In this article, based on findings from the UN (I can almost hear the groan from some of you, but that’s okay, too), indicates that “heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are building up so high, so fast, that some scientists now think the world can no longer limit global warming to the level world leaders have agreed upon as safe”.

And in this story, World Meteorological Deputy Secretary-General Jeremiah Lengoasa said,  “With this picture in mind, even if emissions were stopped overnight globally, the atmospheric concentrations would continue for decades because of the long lifetime of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”.

Our book has tips on how you can bring these facts to bear on your projects.

No, the sky isn’t falling.  But “the sky” is over, under, around, and inside your project.  So you should know about how it affects your project and its project – and vice-verse.

We’ve tend to stay neutral when it comes to the global climate change debate, although we have tried to arm you with the information we believed you, as project managers, need to make sure you can take advantage of any projects that may arise as a result of any mitigation strategies.  Today, we heard about a couple of disturbing reports due out over the next several months.  Their titles were pretty ominous so we decided to dig a little deeper.

Take a look at some of these headlines and reports to be released and see if you don’t agree that they are unnerving;

NOAA: Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries 

Earth has been growing warmer for more than 50 years.

And this one a report that is indicative of what is to come.

The Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.

The title says that those extreme events we have been experiencing, a major snow storm in the northeast in October 2011 for instance, are going to continue and we need a risk mitigation process to address them.  Further, we will need to “adapt” to these changes.

Another report coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);

Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

And finally, an interview from a scientist who has not only been one of the questioners of global climate change, but also his study was partially funded by an organization made up of climate change skeptics.  Dr. Richard Muller, professor of physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Foundation, undertook an independent two year study of global climate change.

It was not that he himself was a sceptic, he just didn’t believe the likes of Tom Friedman and Al Gore because Dr. Muller believes their contentions were not truly science based.  Here is part of the interview between Dr. Muller and Eleanor Hall with Bronwyn Herbert from the Australian Broadcast Network (ABC).  You can hear the entire interview here.

BRONWYN HERBERT: Richard Muller says he wasn’t convinced the earth was warming, and set out two years ago to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong.

RICHARD MULLER: Sceptics had raised legitimate questions. Many of the thermometers were of very poor quality and poorly placed. There were  djustments being made to discontinuities in the data. There was perhaps undue influence from warming of cities, which was warm, but that’s not global warming.

BRONWYN HERBERT: He says he was particularly surprised that his results so closely correlated with previously published data from other teams in the US and the UK.

RICHARD MULLER: Somewhat to my amazement, none of the effects changed the answer. We wound up getting the same answer that the other groups had previously gotten for the amount of warming. It’s about 0.9 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years. The poor temperature quality data, even though it was at bad locations, the change in temperature I recorded was accurate. The urban heat island, just not that much area of the earth is urban. The temperature adjustments that people made, well those adjustments were made with more care than we could know, and in the end the adjustments didn’t bias the data. We picked five times as many stations as they did. Their selection of stations was sufficiently representative that it didn’t change the answer. So, in the end, the amount of global warming is what they said it was.

BRONWYN HERBERT: So do you now believe that global warming on earth is occurring?

RICHARD MULLER: Oh yes. I certainly believe that now.

And finally, from a report Agence France-Presse (AFP) states that a draft UN report three years in the making concludes that man-made climate change has boosted the frequency or intensity of heat waves, wildfires, floods and cyclones and that such disasters are likely to increase in the future.

“The document being discussed by the world’s Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists says the severity of the impacts vary, and some regions are more vulnerable than others. Hundreds of scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) will vet the phonebook-sized draft at a meeting in Kampala of the 194-nation body later this month.

“This is the largest effort that has even been made to assess how extremes are changing,” said Neville Nicholls, a professor at Monash University in  Melbourne, Australia, and a coordinating lead author of one of the review’s key chapters. Mindful of an outcry by climate skeptics over flaws in an earlier IPCC text, those working on the document stress that the level of “confidence” in the findings depends on the quantity and quality of data available.

But the overall picture that emerges is one of enhanced volatility and frequency of dangerous weather, leading in turn to a sharply increased risk for large swathes of humanity in coming decades.”

“Its publication coincides with a series of natural catastrophes around the world that have boosted the need to determine whether such events are freaks of the weather or part of a long-term shift in climate. In 2010, record temperatures fuelled devastating forest fires across Siberia, while parts of Pakistan and India reeled from unprecedented flooding. This year, the United States has suffered from a record number of billion-dollar disasters ranging from flooding in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to Hurricane Irene to the ongoing Texas drought. Large swathes of China are suffering from intense drought as well, even as central America and Thailand count their dead from recent diluvian rains.

Most of these events match predicted impacts of manmade global warming, which has raised temperatures, increased the amount of water in the atmosphere and warmed ocean surface temperatures — all drivers of extreme weather.

- It is “virtually certain” — 99-100% sure — that the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes will increase over the 21st century on a global scale;

- It is “very likely” (90-100% certainty) that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, including heat waves, will continue to increase over most land areas;

- Peak temperatures are “likely” (66-100% certainty) to increase — compared to the late 20th century — up to 3.0 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050, and 5.0 C (9.0 F) by 2100;

- Heavy rain and snowfall is likely to increase over the next century over many regions, especially in the tropics and at high latitudes;

- At the same time, droughts will likely intensify in other areas, notably the Mediterranean region, central Europe, North America, northeastern Brazil and southern Africa.” © 2011 AFP

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that there is more to life than just work, work, work.  In 1890, Yosemite National Park was created.  It’s not that a beautiful place did not exist prior to 1890, it did as shown in the 1878 watercolor of the Digger Indians by Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming en, Indian Life at Mirror Lake.  National parks are great stress relievers.  No matter what your preference, camping, fishing, hiking, birding, photography and more, you can do any or all of it in the myriad of state and national parks scattered across our country.

Although, we certainly can’t get away from projects no matter where we go.  Not only is the designating of a state, local or national park a project, especially for those directly involved in a project like Yosemite, like Galen Clark and John Muir, or the president at the time Benjamin Harrison, but it will create more projects.  Fast forward to present day and the jobs initiative.  While we have not read all of the text of the proposed jobs initiatives, we haven’t seen anything on improving the infrastructure of our national parks.  While it may be that it is buried in there someplace, it probably isn’t.  Maybe it is because it only affects a specific, and small, group of people who use the parks.  We have a feeling that the number may be larger than we think.  According to the latest (2010) figures, more than 281,300,000 people visited our national parks.  Just like this website, however, they may not be all “unique” visits.  But still, 281+ million people per year is nothing to sneeze at, since the total population of the US in 2009 was approximately 307 million people.

But let’s not lose sight of the real issue here.  The question is, if there were infrastructure projects instituted as part of a jobs initiative, what is the economic, social and environmental ripple effects.  Just to give one example:  how many people would be employed during the infrastructure improvement?  If there are improvements, how many additional people would use the facilities?  How many people depend on the visitors themselves; e.g. restaurants, camping/rv suppliers and hotels surrounding the parks?  What are the effects on the environment?  Most importantly to us, these projects will need to be managed.  The different projects will lie along the green spectrum, from green by definition to green in general.

Let’s keep an eye on any jobs initiatives.  They will create projects! 

Often times we talk about the Green Spectrum, particularly with respect to projects that are green in general, or appear to have no sustainability aspect, when, in actuality, all projects have a sustainability element.  This time, we’ll look at a project that is Green by Definition, but is scrutinized through a sustainability lens.  And, it is a very,very interesting concept.

As part of the “Smart from the Start” (that sounds like a good phrase for sustainability in projects, too) initiative by Secretary of Interior Salazar, there is a proposal for a 200 mile-wide wind energy corridor stretching from Canada to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

While we don’t know yet about the other sustainable aspects being considered, we do know, at this point, that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) will write an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).  “Wind energy is crucial to our nation’s future economic and environmental security. We will do our part to facilitate development of wind energy resources, while ensuring that they are sited and designed in ways that minimize and avoid negative impacts to fish and wildlife,” said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. “This EIS process gives us an opportunity to evaluate impacts to dozens of imperiled species at a landscape level to ensure that wind energy development occurs in the right places in the right way.”

The reasoning behind the EIS is that in order to accomplish the project, an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) needs to be granted.  Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act and its implementing regulations “prohibit the take of animal species listed as endangered or threatened.”  It doesn’t allow the harassment, harm, pursuit, hunting, shooting, wounding, trapping, capturing, or collecting or, an attempt to engage in those practices when it comes to endangered or threatened species.  However, Under Section 10 of the Act, it allows for people to obtain an ITP as long as they are pursuing otherwise legal activities.  The permittee is then provided “incidental take” authorization.

The applicant must submit a Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) containing the measures that it will take to minimize, avoid, or mitigate incidental take.  The Service will then review the HCP and issue an EIS that considers the impacts.  The Service will also identify “potentially significant impacts on biological resources, land use, air quality, water quality, water resources, economics, and other environmental/historical resources that may occur directly or indirectly as a result of implementing the proposed action or any of the alternatives. Various strategies for avoiding, minimizing, and mitigating the impacts of incidental take will also be considered.  Sounds like risk management to me!

“The proposed Permit Area is defined as a 200-mile wide corridor determined by defining the center line of the whooping crane migration based on the database of confirmed whooping crane observations from the Cooperative Whooping Crane Tracking Program and buffering that line by 100 miles on either side. This corridor spans the Gulf Coast of Texas north to the Canadian border and encompasses such cities as Houston, TX; Oklahoma City, OK; Wichita, KS; Bismarck, ND; Grand Island, NE; and Aberdeen, SD. In addition, the permit area includes the current and a large part of the historic range of the lesser prairie-chicken which extends the covered area beyond the 200-mile wide whooping crane migration corridor to include parts of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas.”

“Species currently considered for inclusion under the permit include the following: the endangered whooping crane (Grus americana); endangered interior least tern (Sterna antillarum athalassos); endangered piping plover (Charadrius melodus); and lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus), a candidate species.”

There are two important points here for a project manager.  The first is that this will be one heck of a program, involving a huge amount of projects, wind energy projects including; the wind power generators themselves, transmission, distribution, support facilities, etc.  Secondly, it involves looking at the project through a sustainability lens.  In above case, a very narrow view because of regulatory issues (specifically the Endangered Species Act) one of the “drivers” in our book.  There will be more and more of these opportunities for the project manager who is not only aware of sustainability issues, vocabulary, and problems and drivers, but also uses that knowledge and considers greenality* when approaching any project.

* The degree to which an organization (project manager) has considered environmental (sustainable) factors that affect its projects during the entire project life cycle and beyond.

It is hard to stay objective and talk about cradle-to-cradle thinking and considering long term effects, “the end of the end”, and other assertions from our book, when there is a major effect on one of our national treasures, The Yellowstone River, the longest undammed river in the US.  We have a personal affinity toward the river since one of our EarthPM principles spent 11 days in the area doing what is affectionately called “combat fly fishing.”  In other words, 11 days were spent fly fishing as many rivers and streams in Montana, Idaho , and Wyoming that is humanly possible fishing from dawn to dark, while passing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the back seat to the front during the breaks between fishing and fishing called “racing to a new spot.”  A few hours sleep and  right back at it.  But of all the waters fished, the Yellowstone was one of the most incredible fisheries, to say nothing of the beauty.

Of course, the river was nothing like it is right now (see picture above of how it was when we fished it), with gigantic flows spilling over the banks, running between 25,000 and 35,000 cubic feet per second.  The normal rate is around 8,000 cfs.  That’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that there is lots of water to dilute the oil.  And, while this oil spill is relatively small compared to some of the oil spills of the past, 42,000 gallons, or approximately 1000 barrels, is enough.  What is disconcerting is not the short-term effects, but rather the long term-effects on both wildlife and property.  Sound familiar.  We assert that we can no longer take the short term view.  We were not involved in Exxon Mobil’s decision making process when someone thought it was a good idea to bury a pipeline under one of the premier trout waters in America, we can only hope that they did consider what would happen not only if there should be a breach in the pipe, but also the life cycle assessment of that oil should it be unleashed on the ecosystem.

The bad news is that the long term effects of a spill of this nature are virtually unknown.  Add to that, the high water has pushed the oil up onto surrounding properties where it is pooling.  It is likely that the pooled oil will seep into the ground possible contaminating area water wells.  While Yellowstone National Park and the areas where we fished are not threatened, because the spill is approximately 110 miles downstream, it still affects a “fly fishing and bird watching” area.   “Montana Audubon — a nonprofit that specializes in wildlife conservation, especially birds — fears for the health of the American white pelican, a top-of-the-food chain species that dines on critters in the river. “We may get lucky with the short-term effects” because birds weren’t using their normal river habitat due to the high water, said Darcie Vallant, director of the Audubon Conservation Education Center in Billings, which is just 10 miles from the spill. “But the concern is long-term effects,” especially with the pelicans, she added. Montana had some 7,000 breeding pairs in 2010, and that was a decline from the previous year, she said.”

The high water has also made it impossible to assess what’s happening to that ecosystem.  How the bug population that the trout rely upon for food is affected is another unknown.  There is also a concern about the back channels that hold fish eggs and recently hatched fish being contaminated.

Montana State University researchers will be among those monitoring the river, but it could take months before they have a sense of the recovery’s pace. “In the weeks and months ahead, we will be looking for any unusual changes in the river’s natural environment and any impacts on the species of fish we would expect to find at this time of year,” said MSU ecology professor Al Zale. “Some species or ages of fish may be more susceptible to this type of pollution than others.”

Cathy Williams, who raises livestock, wheat, alfalfa and hay with her husband near Laurel, said high water washed oil across much of their 800 acres. “It was the night the river peaked, so the river water was flooded all over the place, and that brought oil all over both ranches,” she said. “All of our grasslands have just thick, black crude stuck to all the grass, trees, low lands.”  Williams said their spring wheat crop and alfalfa are both in need of irrigation, but farmers in the area were advised not to take water from the river for the time being. Drinking supplies also are in limbo, she said. “We get all our drinking water from our wells and for our animals,” Williams said. “All the groundwater, I assume, is probably contaminated. We just don’t know.”

With 20/20 hindsight, and a request for consideration for future planning, there are several places in the project life cycle that greenality issues can be considered:

• Project Charter – connecting enterprise sustainability with project
• Requirements Gathering – again, connecting the enterprise’s environmental management plan(EMP) with the project’s EMP
• Stakeholder Consideration – is there a communications plan in place to notify the stakeholders if this type of issue should occur
• Risk Management – considering environmental risks
• Cost of Greenality – failure costs versus auditing costs for instance

I am sure you can think of more areas where sustainability should be considered.  All in all, we are hoping for a good outcome, here.  The river has an incredible beauty about it.  Let’s not forget that the trout fishing in Montana is a major contributor to the $300 million in revenues from the recreation industry in the state. And, the Yellowstone is also historically very significant.  In late June/early July of 1876, the Far West, a specially designed river vessel, transported the wounded from the campaign against the Indians which included Custer’s Last Stand, down the Yellowstone to the Missouri River and to Bismarck in the Dakota Territories.  Let’s hope for the best here and for long-term, sustainability thinking to prevail for future projects, including those that involve our rare and fragile natural resources.

(Thanks to Msnbc.com’s Miguel Llanos, Reuters and The Associated Press for information included in this blog.)

We know this is a radical, radical departure from our last two postings, which involved river nudity and toilet seat positions (!!!).  How is this post different?  For one thing, the photo involves an image with someone who is fully clothed.  For another it has nothing to do with toilet seats…

But (ahem) now to today’s post.

By the way: we know we lost some of you at that introduction, and you’ve already dallied back to look for the river nudity.  Welcome, er, back.

Here are some interesting statistics:

93% of CEOs believe that sustainability issues will be critical to the future success of their business.

72% of CEOs cite “brand, trust and reputation” as one of the top three
factors driving them to take action on sustainability issues. Revenue growth
and cost reduction is second with 44%.

72% of CEOs see education as the global development issue most critical to
address for the future success of their business. Climate change is second
with 66%.

58% of CEOs identify consumers as the most important stakeholder group
that will impact the way they manage societal expectations. Employees were
second with 45%.

91% of CEOs report that their company will employ new technologies
(e.g., renewable energy, energy efficiency, information and communication
technologies) to address sustainability issues over the next five years.

96% of CEOs believe that sustainability issues should be fully integrated into
the strategy and operations of a company (up from 72% in 2007).

49% of CEOs cite complexity of implementation across functions as the most
significant barrier to implementing an integrated, company-wide approach to
sustainability. Competing strategic priorities is second with 48%.

88% of CEOs believe that they should be integrating sustainability through
their supply chain. Only 54% believe that this has been achieved within their
company. An almost identical performance gap is seen for subsidiaries.

86% of CEOs see “accurate valuation by investors of sustainability in longterm
investments” as important to reaching a tipping point in sustainability.

64% of CEOs see the most important role of the UN Global Compact as
sharing examples of best and emerging practices on sustainability. Guidance
on implementation is second with 51%.

This information comes from a very revealing (really?  are you still focused on THAT?)  report issued by the UN regarding how CEOs feel about sustainability.

The survey, conducted by Accenture, is based on more than 100 in-depth interviews with global leaders. This included 50 CEOs, chairpersons and presidents of UN Global Compact member companies, across 27 countries and representing a broad spectrum of cross industry perspectives.

The report is called, “A New Era of Sustainability” and has this subtitle: “CEO reflections on progress to date, challenges ahead and the impact of the journey toward a
sustainable economy.” Don’t worry, we provide a link at the end of the posting.

We’d especially like to draw your attention to the highest-percentage agreement area, and have you as a project manager remember that the CEO is a rather important stakeholder.  Let’s look again at that statement (remembering again that 96% of CEOs agreed):

“Sustainability issues should be fully integrated into the strategy and operations of a company”.

Not just any company – their company.  And note the change, just from 4 years ago – 2007 – this attribute is up a whopping 24!

In any case, here’s the most substantive point, in our opinion, which we’ll illustrate with an extract:

“CEOs believe that execution is now the real challenge to bringing about the new era of sustainability. Confidence among business leaders about their progress toward this new era is  strong, and their companies are taking concrete steps toward embedded sustainability. Eighty-one percent of CEOs—compared to just 50 percent in 2007—stated that sustainability issues are now fully embedded into the strategy and operations of their company. For example, we saw cases of companies beginning to integrate sustainability issues into their executive compensation packages, as well as design and innovation functions, more than in 2007.”

It’s only a matter of time – we  hope – until the connection with project management will be more cemented in place.  See our other blog postings which make this point, here, and here, and here.

A New Era of Sustainability – download PDF here.

Bridge to Nowhere, Bridge to Somewhere

Our local project is certainly not a bridge to nowhere.  Portsmouth, New Hampshire and the seacoast area are popular commuter destinations.  However, Portsmouth is a very expensive area to live.  As a result, most commuters live to the west of Portsmouth.  Between the town and the suburbs is a major river and an estuary.  There is an old, narrow, four-lane bridge located about at the junction of the estuary, Little Bay, and the river, the Piscataqua, although it is really on the upstream side of the drainage from Little Bay.  The bridge has out lived its usefulness.

The bridge to the left is the old bridge.  The bridge to the right is the old, old bridge.  This is an extremely environmentally sensitive area.  To the right is Little Bay and if you travel far enough up the channel in Little Bay, you reach Great Bay http://www.armofthesea.info/.  There are also 7 major rivers that feed Great Bay, Lamprey, Squamscott, Cocheco, Bellamy, Salmon Falls, Oyster, and Winnicut Rivers.  It is a significant drainage area.  American Shad and Alewives head up those rivers to spawn.  Striped bass, bluefish and others transit through these bridges on their way into Great Bay.  All that said, let’s look at the bridges.

Ultimately, the new bridge combined with the rehab of the old bridge will carry 8 lanes of traffic (4 and 4).  So a new 4 lane bridge will be constructed between the old bridge and the old, old bridge.  The old bridge will be rehab to provide the added four lanes, and the old, old bridge will be rehabbed for pedestrian and bicycle traffic.  Whew that is a mouthful!

This is a rendering of the new and rehabbed bridges all together.  So what does that mean to sustainable project management?  We are not part of the management team for this bridge,  so we don’t know if the project will be management in a sustainable way, but we can hope.  What we can tell you from our research is that we applaud the efforts for a sustainable product of the project.  How can we tell, you might ask?  Well, by rehabbing the old and the old, old bridge, the thinking to us is life cycle assessment.  What will we do with the product of the project once it has outlived its usefulness?  In this case it is redesign, reuse, and recycle.

Again, we don’t know how the project manager will run his or her team, for instance will they minimize the use of paper, will the team be efficient with their energy use, cloud computing, laptops, etc.  But we can see that they are conducting environmental risk assessment in a reasonable way, “many design alternatives were evaluated to achieve the transportation purpose and need of the project.  The environmental impacts for those alternatives were evaluated to balance the transportation needs and the impacts to the environmental resources.”  As we’ve said many times, you may not necessarily go with the most environmentally friendly solution, but those solutions should at the least be evaluated.  There was wetland mitigation, stream restoration, and methods to reduce vehicle idling time, hard acceleration, and stopping time.  Also, consideration was given to the reduction of the overall footprint of the roadway crossing.  Additionally, there was lots of consideration of the human aspect of the effects of the project, keeping one bridge open while the other is constructed, shifting to the newly constructed bridge, a “Traffic and Incident Management Plan.”  I would have liked to see the “incident management plan” for BP, wouldn’t you?

So what are we missing?  A few of the questions we would ask is, how green is your project being run, for one?  The next questions would be about the product of the project like; what kind of surface material are you using? Is it from recycled material?  Is it designed to provide a minimum of drag on vehicle tires?  Is there a mitigation plan for the runoff from cars that are leaking fluids?  You can probably think of another hundred questions about the sustainability of the product of the project, but you get the gist!  I am sure that a lot of our questions could be answered by New Hampshire DOT and the Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc.’s Design Team. What we assert is that there is a lot to sustainable management including the product of the project and the process and that the project management team considers the breath of sustainability.

There are lots of things we could talk about one year later, but for this post we’d like to focus on the suit filed today by BP against Transocean, the rig’s owners, and Cameron International, the supplier of the  blow-out preventer, for $40 billion.  From AP (article), guardian.co.uk,  ”The Deepwater Horizon BOP was unreasonably dangerous, and has caused and continues to cause harm, loss, injuries, and damages to BP (and others) stemming from the blowout of Macondo well, the resulting explosion and fire onboard the Deepwater Horizon, the efforts to regain control of the Macondo well, and the oil spill that ensued before control of the Macondo well could be regained,” BP said in the lawsuit against Cameron.  BP is also suing Halliburton, the company responsible for pouring the cement.

The reason we are focusing on this aspect is because, when we look at the benefits of Green Project Management, we see that green thinking should be a part of all the project’s processes, including the procurement process (just one of the processes outlined in our book).  In this case, if the questions were not asked, we would have asked about the greenality of BP’s “vendors”.  There would have been questions like:  What did Transocean consider for their environmental impact?  What safe guards were in place in case of an issue like a spill or blowout preventer failure?  Were those scenarios even considered?  Driving back into their processes, we could have asked to see the invitation to bid, to examine whether Transocean considered the greenality of their vendors.  This is just a sampling of questions to ask.  On a project this large like this, with the potential for devastation it has, the questioning would have been extensive and rigorous.

We advocate a “greenality clauses”.  We believe that if we choose a company, considering their green efforts as part of the decision making process, that they should be held accountable for those green efforts, as well as capturing that criteria in the contract.   Again, we like to give the obligatory caveat that we were not in the room when the decision was made by BP to go ahead and lease the rig from Transocean, so we don’t know exactly what went on.  But from our point of view, the project did not consider all of the green aspects it should have and that green project management would have helped in that process.

We just learned that EarthPM has been named as one of the “50 Resources for Students Attending Online Project Management Courses” by Online Schools a “premier portal for online education on the web.”  According to their website , ” Our goal is not to revolutionize the concept of education, but rather to help bring people into the 21st century in terms of the way they perceive learning. Education is no longer simply about teachers and textbooks. In today’s Internet age, education is now about infographics, blogs, e-books, web articles, youtube, wikipedia, and so much more. Thus, we at Online Schools do not propose to revolutionize education itself, but rather, we strive to revolutionize the way people think about and approach education.
That said, first and foremost, we do believe that all individuals should have a strong foundation in traditional learning, evidenced by our emphasis on providing honest, up-to-date and readily available information on accredited online schools.”

We are the first listing (#13) under “UNUSUAL PERSPECTIVES ON PROJECT MANAGEMENT.”  We couldn’t say it better than they do. “It’s important for prospective project managers to stay fresh. There are new and different aspects of the industry to consider. A little humor or thinking outside the box about the project management process is a good way to sharpen skills and define goals.”  And, our goal is to bring Green Project Management into the mainstream, keeping the humor and thinking outside the box, and make it part of the way we do business.  We are joined on the list by wonderful resources like our friends Elizabeth Harrin, A Girl’s Guide to Project Management and Peter Taylor, The Lazy Project Manager.  Check us all out!  With all of the sites out there, we’re proud to be included in this exclusive list.

When you think is it safe to go back in the water, the sharks show up.  The cost of greenality keeps going up for the principles involved in the Gulf Oil Spill.  The Department of Justice announced today that it would join in the civil suit being filed against such companies as BP, Anadarko, and Transocean.  Adding the cost of the spill paid out so far, the losses of life, and the $20 billion fund, what will the final price tag be?  We’re not saying that the tragedy could have been avoided, or the damage could have been minimized if the companies involved had paid more attention to the project’s environmental risks  involved with the Deep Water Horizon.  But then again, why take the risks without fully investigating ALL project risks, especially with the potential environmental damage that could occur.  Again, we were not in the room when these decisions were made (perhaps we should have been and then we’d know), but it makes sense to us that if all of the risks were not considered, it certainly would have been cheaper, by orders of magnitude, to cover all the bases.   That’s what we think.  For more information on managing projects with greenality, see our book.