Latest / Project Podcast / How to put sustainability at the heart of your work

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How to put sustainability at the heart of your work · Project Podcast

• 0:09
  Welcome to the OPM podcast. OPM is the chartered body for
• 0:12
  the project profession. My name is Emma DeVito and I'm
• 0:15
  the editor of projects apm's quarterly journal and your host.
• 0:19
  Today, I'm speaking to Christina bull a partner at qsa Partners.
• 0:23
  Abby Court consultancy with a mission to help organizations
• 0:26
  Implement circular economy, business models.
• 0:30
  A project professional with a focus on sustainability,
• 0:33
  Christina, currently advises clothing brands and retailers
• 0:35
  and how to become more truly sustainable.
• 0:38
  She also works on the Cotton lives on initiative, a recycling
• 0:42
  program, turning your old Cotton's into new products.
• 0:45
  Listen on to find out about her work and sustainability and for
• 0:49
  her advice for every project professional and what more you
• 0:52
  can do, Welcome, Christina. Thanks for joining us on the OPM
• 1:02
  podcast. Could you start by telling us a
• 1:04
  little bit about your project management career, and how
• 1:06
  you've come to work in sustainability.
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  So, I have a quite odd starting. The world of sustainability, I
• 1:14
  started to train to become a lawyer and was two-thirds of the
• 1:18
  way through becoming a lawyer in a large corporate firm in Leeds.
• 1:23
  And then had just had an epiphany that I didn't want to
• 1:26
  become a lawyer working 24 hours a day.
• 1:29
  My then boyfriend, who's that? My husband had relocated down to
• 1:34
  Oxfordshire and I was looking for jobs and there was a job
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  that came up at an organization called rap which is the waste of
• 1:40
  resources Action Program. I joined wrap in a legal
• 1:45
  capacity so doing their contracts and things like that
• 1:48
  and then realize that the more I found out about business, as I
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  kind of started the naivety of a young person realized that they
• 1:57
  were doing some incredible work working.
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  Funded by government to change the way, businesses operate, and
• 2:04
  getting them to work, collectively together into the
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  on topics of sustainability. So, working kind of focusing on
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  reducing carbon water and waste targets.
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  At the time when I was working there and then I just decided
• 2:15
  actually I think the work that was being done on the projects
• 2:19
  of the contract. That I was writing was
• 2:21
  significantly more interesting than the writing of the
• 2:23
  contracts and the changing of the contracts.
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  So sore opportunities coming up there was It's happening and I
• 2:31
  applied and decided that actually being a project manager
• 2:34
  on this project where I was making a significant change to
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  industry was really much more interesting than what I was
• 2:42
  doing and where you are already interested in sustainability
• 2:46
  then, or is it something that's grown?
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  I was always interested but it's definitely grown and it sparked
• 2:55
  an interest much more about drivers for change why?
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  And I really was fascinated to understand the drivers for
• 3:03
  Change and why businesses want to make changes for
• 3:07
  sustainability reasons. And I wanted to kind of impact
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  on that to ensure that the business is that I was working
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  with what I was really making them more sustainable.
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  In both the sense that they are viable Sustainably and also
• 3:23
  sustainable, in the sense of the environmental purposes of that
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  what they were doing. So reframing, what they were
• 3:28
  doing or how they could do business, to be much, more
• 3:32
  better for the environment, and the World At Large.
• 3:36
  Okay. And then, where did you go after
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  as from wrap. I worked a trap for 8 to 10
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  years and the work I was doing. There was also bringing industry
• 3:46
  to Industries together. So I worked with the hospitality
• 3:50
  sector and that was very much bringing the whole of the
• 3:54
  hospitality industry together to make change collectively.
• 3:59
  And that, then kind of Applied that approach to working with
• 4:03
  the construction industry. So getting construction industry
• 4:07
  in its entirety. So Architects designers
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  Construction, Builders design and build to improve the way in
• 4:14
  which they collectively do business to make sure that that
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  supply chain Works seamlessly together.
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  So that everyone's working in the same direction rather than
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  an architect designing, something that a builder, can't
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  build and therefore wasting significant resources.
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  So they have that collaborative. Work happening on a grand scale
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  as well as kind of on those much on smaller projects.
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  So trying to get everybody to work together.
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  So So the work that happened, it was built around creating
• 4:44
  voluntary agreements. So the setting targets for the
• 4:48
  industry and then collectively getting the industry to work
• 4:50
  together to reduce those impacts.
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  So the carbon water and waste impacts on a project level on a
• 4:57
  business level and then on a window streamer level, as well.
• 5:00
  You must have had your work cut out.
• 5:03
  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
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  The work was cut out but it was when you had those moments of
• 5:08
  change or Was going to be the first to step over the line and
• 5:13
  once you have that first business that stepped over the
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  line and said, yes we're going to do this.
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  It became a bit of a domino effect because everybody wanted
• 5:21
  to stay at the Forefront of leading the change and being
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  leading the charge and being at the Forefront of change knowing
• 5:29
  that they could collectively make a collaborative difference
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  to Industry. Before you tell us about your
• 5:36
  current role, their projects you're working on, how did you
• 5:38
  then shift from that to where you are now?
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  So, I moved from rap and I set up my own business working
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  again, very much working doing project management within
• 5:49
  sustainability. Could you give us some an idea
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  of some of the projects you've worked on because I think, you
• 5:55
  know, be interesting for listeners to learn how you can
• 5:59
  Traverse different Industries. How how do you move from
• 6:03
  construction to? Fatality to Fashion textiles as
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  a project professional. It's one of the benefits of
• 6:11
  having a profession like this but you've actually done it.
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  So could you give us an idea of some of the projects you've
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  worked on and how easy it's been as a project professional to
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  move between them? So for example, one of the
• 6:26
  clients that we work for is hs1, so high speed, one said they own
• 6:30
  some pancreas and the drain line all the way down.
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  Into the tunnel and we have written their sustainability
• 6:38
  strategy. So I was instrumental in
• 6:41
  building that strategy and they were a brilliant client because
• 6:43
  they had almost a blank piece of paper.
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  They were very keen to be industry leaders.
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  So we wrote their sustainability strategy and off the back of
• 6:53
  that it was very well received from industry and it was
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  announced by the transport Minister off the back of that
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  strategy development, they were invited to run workshops So cop
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  26. So another arm of what we did
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  was delivering their workshop at cock, 26.
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  So what the content was trying to get an understanding of the
• 7:14
  types of people that would be there and really pushing them
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  further to say, you know, we in the construction in the
• 7:21
  infrastructure of Transport, we need a system change.
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  So how do we get Mobility as a service?
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  How do we fully ensure that we get those everybody within that
• 7:32
  industry working together to systematically change the way in
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  which we use transport. So that's one kind of big
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  example. Lots of the other work that we
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  do is very much as you said in your intro circuit focused
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  around the circular business models.
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  So, and that goes from working on strategic approaches.
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  So, what should, how should a brand?
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  And I could predominantly work with clothing brands of
• 8:00
  retailers. So how can a clothing and
• 8:03
  fashion brand? Implement a circular business
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  model, how could it be built into that strategy?
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  So looking at the businesses strategy and spinning that out
• 8:13
  to understand how a circular business model, can deliver this
• 8:17
  strategy. So, we've worked with organizer
• 8:19
  companies, like far-fetched, we built, we worked with added Us
• 8:22
  in the very early days of kind of their thinking around what
• 8:26
  circularity meant to them as a business.
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  And then through to actually delivering the project as well.
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  So I've another project that we worked on and building a
• 8:36
  circular business model is forward FW.
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  It's a really fabulous ski brand and we help them build a repair
• 8:45
  model, so they have it's a ski brand.
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  People love. You wear your ski clothes.
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  It's a really kind of full-on skiers and boarders.
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  How do you ensure that you can get repairs Within?
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  Kind of a concentrated geography in different parts of the world,
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  so we help them set up repair services in Europe, America and
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  Japan as well to ensure that you had that kind of localized
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  service that skiers could get their clothing back within open
• 9:14
  of a reasonable time frame and then ensuring that the quality
• 9:17
  of the repair was, as good as new.
• 9:20
  I mean, that's an idea that's taking off, isn't it?
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  The idea that you can go back to the retailer or the brand to
• 9:26
  repair something I've seen more and more of that Around.
• 9:30
  What can you tell us a bit about cotton lives on?
• 9:33
  Yeah, so so it's so cotton lives on is a program that fits within
• 9:39
  the circular economy in that, it repurposes cotton once it's not
• 9:46
  able to be repaired resold. So the project, it takes cotton
• 9:51
  clothing, that's donated from either brands or from consumers,
• 9:55
  then it goes through processes. And then that product is turned
• 9:59
  into a roll, Matt, and that All, Matt is then donated to a
• 10:04
  charity or a humanitarian project.
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  What's your role exactly been on that will I be in the program
• 10:12
  lead for that? So, our clients cotton
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  Incorporated approach does actually at the very start, but
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  just before covid happens and they wanted and they said, they
• 10:25
  had this project. They wanted to come and talk to
• 10:27
  us about it. So they came probably about two
• 10:31
  weeks before lockdown happened. Which kind of made for an
• 10:35
  interesting start of Project. Because a lot of the work that I
• 10:39
  do very much focuses on relationships.
• 10:43
  So we had to so they approached us and said we wanted to launch
• 10:47
  a program in the UK was very very similar to a project that
• 10:50
  they have in America called blue jeans, go green but the word
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  wanted to have of completely new look feel.
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  They want to go. It was a starting from up with a
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  blank piece of paper. So we had to look at whether it
• 11:03
  was viable where there was anything already happening in
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  You can while steroids recycling, it's not necessarily
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  clear where that recycling goes or Charity donations, a
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  significant percentage of Charity donations.
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  Don't end up in the charity shops.
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  They actually end up overseas or incinerated.
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  So actually, we wanted to make a really viable option for
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  consumers and brands. To ensure that the cotton that
• 11:31
  was produced has a good end of life purpose, so a lot of the
• 11:37
  other. So the work in tailed doing
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  research on other programs interviewing Brands to find out
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  if this was something that would they would be interested in.
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  I'm going back to that strategic aim.
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  What is their strategic targets? And would it fit with what they
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  were doing? Doing some R&D to find out,
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  actually, what end product could be used, and we've got quite a
• 11:58
  few Apostle Eve, but the one that we launched the program
• 12:02
  with is the role, Matt, and that's been donated to different
• 12:06
  charities. And actually last week, we had
• 12:08
  our very first delivery which is awesome at Association for
• 12:13
  project management. We know your most important
• 12:15
  project is your career but as a project manager, it's not always
• 12:19
  easy to make project me happen. That's where our membership can
• 12:23
  help. We offer exclusive training
• 12:25
  qualifications and learning resources to keep your
• 12:28
  development. On track, join our 35,000
• 12:31
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• 12:34
  the project profession. Open up your future at a p.m.
• 12:38
  Dot org.uk. Your job is about making change
• 12:44
  happen. Your job is about getting people
• 12:47
  to collaborate to do something. That is probably difficult.
• 12:53
  I wondered what to two questions, really about skills,
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  as a project, professional what skills have you been able to
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  transfer between sectors? So you know you work for hs1 but
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  you're working with Brands clothing brands what Skills.
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  You see is transferable between them and what skills do you need
• 13:19
  to make change happen? Project management?
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  For me is if you're on budget to time you know if you have those
• 13:27
  principles underpinning what you do they are absolutely
• 13:30
  transferable across any project that you do.
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  You have to have a good ability to track your budget and where
• 13:38
  you are with that budget and Also kind of time management and
• 13:44
  that's key. I think if you have those two
• 13:46
  aspects on top of which you have to have strong communication
• 13:51
  skills, I think you can have you can be a project management and
• 13:55
  project manager and you can transfer your skills to any
• 13:59
  sector because the sector knowledge is absolutely
• 14:02
  learnable. Well, the difficulties and the
• 14:05
  challenges is it might be around language terms that you know,
• 14:09
  use within certain industries. Yeah, it's those nuances that we
• 14:13
  definitely the language nuances. But again, I started working in
• 14:18
  the world of sustainability having done a law degree and
• 14:21
  trained to be a lawyer. It's not if you have a thirst
• 14:25
  for learning new things then I actually think those topics.
• 14:30
  I can talk reasonably about concrete.
• 14:33
  It's not that. That's interesting too, that
• 14:35
  many people. But equally I can talk about
• 14:37
  thread count and two very different things.
• 14:41
  Yeah, yeah. But you know, I'm not, I'm not a
• 14:44
  technical expert in either and you absolutely have technical
• 14:46
  experts in both of those and I used to work with a guy that was
• 14:49
  had a PhD in concrete, really? Yeah, I don't, but I can have a
• 14:57
  reasonable conversation about those things.
• 14:59
  It's when you get down to that nitty-gritty of the specific and
• 15:03
  I suppose, the if you wanted to do a very specific role within
• 15:08
  sustainability that needs very clear if you wanted to do carbon
• 15:13
  assessments, that's a very complete you've got to have very
• 15:16
  technical abilities on that and I would put my hands up and say,
• 15:19
  I don't have that, I'm very much like you say about making change
• 15:23
  within the business and making change within industry, and I
• 15:26
  think that's a much softer skill set, that is significantly more
• 15:31
  transferable than those kind of Really deep technical
• 15:36
  capabilities that are needed for other things.
• 15:39
  So, I mean, talking about making change happen.
• 15:41
  How do you get change to happen? Amongst people that need to
• 15:47
  collaborate perhaps their competitors?
• 15:48
  Anyway, how do you get a group of businesses or a sector to
• 15:53
  work together and want to make change and sort of lessons for
• 15:58
  the project professionals around change and how to make it
• 16:02
  happen, effectively? Would be really helpful or AB is
• 16:05
  definitely a range of approaches and that's not you do one
• 16:09
  approach and that works and that's it.
• 16:12
  You have to apply a range of approaches for every project
• 16:16
  that you're working on. So I would say it's about
• 16:20
  removing all of those competitive advantages or
• 16:24
  competitive challenges that the different organizations will
• 16:28
  have by working collaboratively together and present the picture
• 16:31
  that actually it's much more about The bigger picture it's
• 16:34
  about changing industry, and being the leaders and at the
• 16:38
  Forefront. So you're playing to people's
• 16:39
  egos, you're playing to them. Being always that business being
• 16:43
  at the Forefront of change and driving change within a specific
• 16:46
  industry. But then on an individual basis,
• 16:49
  you do definitely have to cherry pick and pick them off and say
• 16:53
  you know, if you do this then it means that you will have taken
• 16:56
  the first step and you will be the first.
• 17:01
  And so it's kind of playing to the Is egos or the individual
• 17:05
  egos on a kind of a collaborative basis.
• 17:08
  You have to change the industry for the better and you are the
• 17:10
  industry leaders and then on a one-to-one basis.
• 17:13
  If you jump, if you go first, then actually you will be seen
• 17:17
  as the one that has started that forging their change.
• 17:21
  Okay. So he's sort of I say and what
• 17:22
  about any lessons you've learned about sustainability throughout
• 17:25
  your project management career, that other professionals might
• 17:28
  find useful in your really at The Cutting Edge.
• 17:30
  And there's probably many listeners who who are working on
• 17:35
  projects for sustainability, is not the call Focus but they want
• 17:39
  they want more of it to happen and the lessons you could pass
• 17:44
  on to them, I would definitely say ask questions about what
• 17:52
  your company or what your project is doing about
• 17:54
  sustainability and be really difficult and ask those
• 17:57
  questions. Because if you don't, if those
• 18:00
  questions aren't ask then we will continually going on.
• 18:02
  Blindly And look to see if there are any opportunities to build
• 18:10
  in sustainable improvements within your project or the
• 18:14
  company through the work, you do.
• 18:17
  So like if from a, you know, is there an opportunity to if
• 18:22
  you're involved in procurement, can you set procurement
• 18:25
  policies, or can you set procurement for a specific
• 18:28
  project to ensure that a contractor or project has to
• 18:32
  meet certain requirements? It's a great driver and a great
• 18:36
  Catalyst for change. Because once you've set once,
• 18:39
  something's being procured it, that opportunity is gone.
• 18:42
  Where is actually, if you can do it at the contract level, then
• 18:45
  you have such an amazing opportunity to make systemic
• 18:48
  changes within the project or within the business.
• 18:52
  I mean, how optimistic are you feeling about sustainability?
• 18:56
  That there's the spin, so much green washing and a galvanizing
• 19:01
  of attention. I guess, from, after cop 26, and
• 19:05
  we've had a record scorching summer that people it's become
• 19:09
  climate changes becoming real. How about how optimistic are
• 19:13
  you? Or how can we get past the green
• 19:16
  washing to effect real change across the project specifically
• 19:20
  in the world of project manager? Well, in terms of greenwashing
• 19:23
  and certainly from a clothing textiles Brands and Retail point
• 19:29
  of view that, you know there's a real light being shown on it at
• 19:32
  the moment and there's a couple of very significant Brands,
• 19:35
  being investigated at the moment by government at the moment.
• 19:38
  And there's also a couple of court cases in Europe and in the
• 19:41
  US on a couple of specific Brands about the greenwashing
• 19:47
  that they have reportedly been. Marketing.
• 19:53
  And I think that's great because actually, and some people say,
• 19:56
  well, you know, they are trying, but I think by having these
• 19:59
  court cases, you're raising awareness of it and it's
• 20:02
  becoming in normal media. So you're getting awareness of
• 20:08
  it for me about change. It's getting the kpis for
• 20:16
  sustainability took kind of as a combat for greenwashing.
• 20:20
  You have to get Kpis with in the C Suite or the directors or
• 20:25
  whoever, you know, the Business Leaders.
• 20:28
  And if those kpis and those personal kpis are with it, you
• 20:32
  know, are focused on actually changing and changing.
• 20:36
  Sustainably. Then you're going to absolutely
• 20:38
  Focus Minds. So there's no opportunity for
• 20:41
  green wash and then those marketing, you know, ultimately
• 20:44
  it's a marketing piece, isn't it there greenwash?
• 20:47
  We're more sustainable than we are.
• 20:49
  There's no opportunity for that because that director or that
• 20:53
  but VP vice president has that kpi on their head.
• 21:00
  City. And any advice you could give to
• 21:03
  project professionals, wanting to get more involved in all
• 21:06
  things, sustainable, or sustainable projects.
• 21:09
  Specifically, there's lots of good course.
• 21:12
  I mean this there's so many jobs at the moment that have a
• 21:16
  sustainability angle and maybe that's because that's the lens
• 21:18
  in which I see the world. But it's it's I think it's
• 21:21
  really exciting. I think the lots and lots of
• 21:25
  different. Businesses are looking at
• 21:27
  sustainability individuals. So Whether that and if you're a
• 21:30
  project manager, can it, you've got all those transferable
• 21:33
  skills that we talked about. And actually the you if you kind
• 21:38
  of combine that with a good post grad or a good course, then, you
• 21:47
  know, on the specific sustainability or the kind of
• 21:50
  key themes of sustainability, then I think you'll really stand
• 21:52
  yourself in good stead to get within that.
• 21:55
  And also by asking those questions of the or project, it
• 21:57
  might be that they have. It's not Ben what about and
• 22:00
  you're and the Kind of the senior person says well if you
• 22:05
  want to take that on and you can take that charge.
• 22:08
  That's a, you know, that's an amazing opportunity for you to
• 22:11
  go in there and absolutely ask all those difficult questions.
• 22:14
  And start pushing pushing what is capable of these doable and
• 22:17
  what's capable and just to reiterate what you're saying
• 22:21
  really is that change can happen with one individual.
• 22:24
  I really think it can. I think if you get you.
• 22:27
  Yeah. And yeah absolutely.
• 22:30
  Can we always so when we Old circular business models for
• 22:35
  Brands. We always say to them.
• 22:37
  Who within c-suite is the leader for this who is ultimately
• 22:42
  responsible. So when we work with Brands, we
• 22:46
  tend to work with the sustainability person and
• 22:48
  actually this is a commercial opportunity.
• 22:50
  So circular business models are equally about the commercial
• 22:53
  opportunity as the sustainability opportunity.
• 22:56
  So we would always Advocate that somebody out of the
• 23:01
  sustainability team is the lead for the project or lead for the
• 23:06
  business model. And that's why you really Drive
• 23:10
  change. Okay.
• 23:12
  Print is anything else you'd like to add that?
• 23:15
  We haven't covered around sustainability and project
• 23:17
  management also or actually transferring from one project to
• 23:22
  another with a focus on sustainability.
• 23:24
  Any, any last words of advice you'd like to give I'm really
• 23:29
  optimistic, I mean, the pace of change, we're getting there.
• 23:34
  We're at a cancer at the moment. Are we really need to get to a
• 23:36
  Gallop? But I you know, we're we are
• 23:38
  changing and the change is moving much more radically
• 23:41
  investment funds. Have a significant power and I
• 23:44
  think that's going to become more and more prevalent.
• 23:48
  But I am optimistic, I think the mindset of the next generation
• 23:52
  of that sharing of having a sharing economy of not wanting
• 23:56
  stuff for Stuff sake. I'm really encouraged by, and I
• 24:03
  think by being challenging and continually asking questions, I
• 24:08
  think the Next Generation have a real opportunity to
• 24:11
  fundamentally change the way business does business.
• 24:15
  Well what brilliant way to end our podcast.
• 24:17
  Thank you so much for your time and your valuable advice and you
• 24:21
  know, hoping that more change like this happen.
• 24:24
  So thanks again, thank you very much for having me.
• 24:27
  It's been a pleasure. Thanks again to Christina for
• 24:32
  joining us and to you for listening to this episode of the
• 24:35
  OPM podcast. Watch out for the Autumn issue
• 24:38
  of project Journal which lands late September where we
• 24:41
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• 24:43
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