When it comes to projects, the health care industry is no different from other industries.  There are projects in constant motion. The health care industry addresses issues of competition, time to market, new product introduction (includes new processes and procedures), and enhancements to technology, equipment or existing policies.  The discipline of project management can and should be applied.  Of course there is no guarantee for project success, no “silver bullet,” but a disciplined approach gives you more of a chance for project success than a random, haphazard, “seat-of-your-pants” approach.  And, with the “green wave” of environmental awareness, mandates and guidelines, as well as regulatory efforts, more and more organizations, including those in health care, are adopting and having to adopt, a greener focus.  Again, without some structure those approaches are hit-and-miss at best.  So as more and more heath care organizations are adopting the disciple of project management, it only makes sense to couple that discipline with an Environmental Management Plan (EMP).

So what is an EMP and how can it help you, as a project manager, your project team and your enterprise?

I am making an assumption here that your organization has an environmental policy, or at the least, contained within the mission statement, is some statement of environmental commitment.  If there is none, then the first job of anyone who manages the organizations projects is to suggest/implore/demand that policy.  For the reasons outlines above, the “green wave,” regulations etc.,  is no longer an option but a necessity to have a green commitment at the organization level.  Projects are where ideas become reality, and those who manage projects make those ideas real.  Because managing projects is the business end of business, those who manage projects, therefore, have the duty to require that commitment.  It is good for the business.

As mentioned before, the EMP is focused on the environmental and sustainability aspects of projects.  Like all good plans, the EMP has some inputs and the results of the EMP will be used as inputs to other plans.  Inputs to the EMP are the organizations environmental objectives, policies and the environmental risks.  The plan will contain considerations for the project’s scope, stakeholders, organizational policies, and risk register.  It will use tools like benchmarking and cost-benefit analysis to determine best practices, as well as using the cost of greenality for decision making.  Outputs of the EMP will drive other necessary project management plans like risk, quality, communication, human resources, cost, and procurement management plans.

As an example of how you might use the information from your EMP, I’ll use procurement.  If the intent of your organization is to use “green” suppliers, like Wal-Mart does, then the EMP will provide clear criteria for choosing an environmentally friendly company.  Remember, the EMP is a project-guiding document, not mandate.  The ultimate decision on whether or not to use one company over another, whether environmentally friendly or not, will still be an organizational decision.  The EMP will have those guidelines, but there are instances, where something is prohibitively costly, where the decision will more than likely not be made in favor of the environment.  This can be frustrating for you, especially if you are passionate about the environment, but you must realize that there are other factors at work.  However, this should not dissuade you from putting the best EMP together that you can.

The green wave is gaining strength, and so is competition within the health care industry.  An effective EMP is a way to differentiate one organization from another.  I’ll talk more about how to “green up” your health care projects in my next blog.

The concept of an Environmental Management Plan (EMP)© was first offered by Rich Maltzman and me  in our proposal to The Project Management Institute® for inclusion of environmental considerations for project management, in the future Fifth Edition of The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). ® The PMBOK Guide is the “bible” for project managers.  Its primary function is to provide those who manage projects with a framework for application of the project management disciple.  The EMP is specifically focused on the environmental and sustainability aspects of the organization’s projects.  It is also tied to project activities like scope, stakeholder considerations, organizational policies, risk registers.  In addition, the EMP will use measurement tools like benchmarking, cost-benefit analysis, and the cost of greenality to insure that the environmental and sustainability aspects of their projects are considered.  Greenality, a new word coined in Green Project Management, CRC Press 2010, as the “degree to which an organization considers green (environmental) aspects of their projects throughout the project life cycle.”  The cost of greenality therefore is divided into two categories, the cost of good greenality, audits, training, etc., and the cost of bad greenality, the cost of internal and external failures.  I’ll talk more about greenality and greenality measurements in a future blog.

For more information about EarthPM®, see http://earthpm.com.

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How many gallons of water did you use use this morning before you got to work? Many of us are pretty clueless about this. How about the consumer protections in bottled water?

Because today’s Blog Action Day, and the focus is on water, we wanted to point to some simple tips we are promoting, through our collaboration with the Water Use It Wisely campaign. Sure they may be ‘little drops of water’ but these micro actions, or ‘small modifications‘ as the White House blog put it, can make a difference. (We did an entire radio show on this last month if you are interested.)

In that Water Use It Wisely campaign, there are tips such as these two:

Tip # 32:

“Support ‘Tap Into Quality‘ and forgo those plastic water bottles to lower your carbon footprint.”

Tip # 7

Have a water audit done for your facility to find out the recommended water use for your operations, then make sure someone monitors your utility bills to gauge your monthly consumption.

Need a few more? Here’s a bigger list.

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In the news we hear so much about alternative energy, energy tax credits, ENERGY STAR products and more, but starting with little or no budget, the basics can go a long way in saving energy and reducing costs.

Go for “low hanging fruit.” Taking these simple, easy actions toward being more energy efficient can lower your office’s electrical bills and leave your company feeling good about its efforts.

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) System

Monitor thermostat settings.

Most utility companies recommend setting thermostats to 78 degrees or higher in summer and 68 degrees or lower in winter. Each degree below these recommendations in summer, or above in winter, represents an approximate 4 percent increase in the electric portion of your utility bill. Use fans to keep cooler in summer. They can make us feel about 6 degrees cooler and often use less energy than a 100-watt bulb. However, don’t forget fans cool people, not rooms. Turn them off when no one is in the room.

No one there? Turn thermostats up, down or off.

Set the thermostat up during the cooling season, down during the heating season or off when everyone has left work for the day. HVAC systems are either fully on or fully off. Therefore, the amount of energy needed to run the HVAC system to warm things up or cool things down in the morning is less than if the HVAC system were on for more than six hours at night, according to the University of Oregon.

Conduct routine maintenance on HVAC system in spring and fall.

Regular maintenance of cooling and heating equipment ensures equipment is running efficiently with clean condenser and/or blower coils and filters, proper refrigerant levels and no leaking ducts. According to Flex Your Power, California’s statewide energy efficiency campaign, maintenance saves up to 30 percent of fan and up to 10 percent of space-conditioning energy use.

Office with a window?

Assist the heating and cooling system in your office by using blinds to control the heat from sunlight entering the office through windows. Shut sun out in summer and let it in winter.

Lighting

Turn off the lights.

Energy expended for lighting in commercial buildings is second only to the energy used for heating and cooling equipment. Turn off the lights whenever you leave a room and when no one is around (even if you will be gone for just a minute or two). Also, make sure to turn off all lights in the office at the end of the day. According to educational information from the Eugene Water & Electric Board in Oregon, “turning off the lights reduces operating costs in two ways: It saves energy and reduces the number of lamp replacements.”

Only use necessary lights.

Turn off lighting that does not contribute to proper lighting for the individual workspaces.  For example, try using only half or none of overhead lighting when desk lights are in use. And don’t forget to turn off outdoor lights during daylight hours.

Use daylighting to your advantage.

If your office gets sufficient natural lighting through windows or skylights, leave lights off and strategically place desks and workstations to maximize this benefit. Turn lights on only in interior areas where they may be necessary.

Electronics

Use power management features.

Set computers and monitors to use their low power, or “sleep mode,” after a designated period of inactivity.

Turn it off.

Computers, copiers, printers, wireless routers and other non-essential electronic devices use energy even when they are idle or on stand-by. Even chargers. Unplug them when not in use and at the end of the day/work week. Consider using a power strip to make this task easier.

Have the low hanging fruit taken care of and want to do more?  Invest in a programmable thermostat, check/add weather stripping and insulation, and take the ENERGY STAR Challenge.

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Over the weekend I was at DEMO, the Fall 2010 conference, held in Silicon Valley. Here are my favorite products -and if you watch till the end, you’ll see my pick of the ‘DEMO Dog’ as well!

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I thought I might as well pose the challenge (below) in the form of a video.

The winning video response will get this! It’s a DVD of the brilliant documentary, Garbage, by Andrew Nisker. Some of you may recall I spoke to Nisker on my radio show a few weeks back if you like to hear the back-story of the documentary. Act now!

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If the march of progress is inexorably forward, what happens when we reach the edge of a cliff?  This is the question asked by Yvon Chouinard, septuagenarian rock climber, surfer, founder of the Patagonia outdoor clothing line and philanthropist in the movie 180° South: Conquerors of the Useless.

This beautifully filmed movie features long-time friends Chouinard and Douglas Tompkins, founder of The North Face, and their attempts to save vast swaths of wilderness from the press of development.  It begins with the 10,000 mile sea voyage of Jeff Johnson, a young rock climber inspired by Chouinard and Tompkins, who aims to climb Cerro Corcovado peak in Patagonia, in southern Argentina.  During the voyage, the mast of the sailboat collapses and breaks, and the crew is forced to motor 400 miles to Easter Island (Rapa Nui) for repairs.

While on Rapa Nui, Johnson learns about the history of the island’s moai – the famous statues of large, stone heads carved by the indigenous population. The moai line the island’s coast, which is no small feat considering the lack of industrial tools when they were created. According to local legend, the problem of transporting these large rocks to every corner of the island was solved by cutting down trees and rolling the rocks on top of them to their destination.  Unfortunately, in each clan’s or tribe’s desire to create more statues than the next tribe over, all the island’s trees were cut down, leaving a denuded landscape void of timber. The population of the island dropped from around 3,000 to 111 people by 1877. (The effects of deforestation on the population, some say, were less than the slave raiding and disease introduced by Europeans, however).

Fast forward to Santiago, Chile. Repaired, the sailboat crosses to the mainland and Johnson lands in Santiago, the capital. Larger than Los Angeles, it is a sprawling megalopolis. To provide energy to its urban population, the Chilean government has “sold” its rivers to power companies, which are rapidly damming them. Further, wood pulp companies have built huge factories next to waterways to provide timber for urban development, poisoning the water and air, and destroying the local fishing and agricultural way of life of the area’s inhabitants.  

This is where Chouinard and Tompkins come in. Tompkins and his wife purchase 2 million acres of pristine, undeveloped land in Chile and Argentina, for the purpose of restoring, protecting and donating as national parks. Tompkins and local vaqueros then join forces and actively protest the construction of dams on two of Chile’s wildest rivers.

The primary consumers of the dam’s power are vast distances away from the dams, and, as pointed out by one Chilean researcher, are so removed from the process that they aren’t really aware of its true cost.

The Chilean saga is not unique – it has been repeated in its many manifestations since the Industrial Revolution.  But how long can it go on?  How long until, like the legend of Rapa Nui, there is nothing left?

Back to Chouinard’s question regarding the forward march of progress.  Many believe that moving toward sustainability requires us to move backward, backward along the path of progress.

As Chouinard points out in the movie, however, when you come to the edge of cliff, you never walk backwards from the cliff edge.  At the same time, you don’t continue moving forward right off the edge of the cliff.  Instead, what you do is turn around and move forward – but in a different direction.

In reality, sustainability is not about going backwards. It is about using what we know now to make ourselves more efficient and more effective in our use of resources, both human and natural.  Sustainability is about being creative, innovative, inventive and forward looking, not about returning to the Stone Age.

Sustainable business practices will improve your company’s profitability, contributing to its bottom line over the long-term.  But it will also contribute to the bottom line of reducing everyone’s “footprint” on the planet, making the planet a better place, for all of us, and our children, over the long-term. 

And don’t think that sustainability is only about big fixes and dramatic action. Small efforts add up quickly. Employees at Park&Co., an advertising agency, decided to limit themselves to one ream of paper per person per year, saving the company paper and saving trees in the process. What can you do to reduce your company’s energy demands?  What processes can you implement to save resources?

Many people believe we have reached a tipping point with the world’s resources—that we are on the edge of the cliff.  Can we turn around and move forward toward sustainability, rather than heading over the cliff?  It is up to us to decide.

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How many do you have lurking in your closet? Your desk? Your junk drawer?

I’m talking about cell phones.

We are inseparable from our cell phones…until the latest and greatest model comes out. Then, we kick the old ones to the curb. “Someday,” you think, “I’ll get around to recycling it.”

The Environmental Protection Agency wants you to know that “someday” is here – and it’s here for a week. The EPA is asking us to recycle our cell phones during the second annual National Cell Phone Recycling Week, April 5 – 11, 2010.

Currently, only about 10 percent of cell phones are recycled. Americans toss 130 million cell phones each year! Each year! If we recycled them, we’d save enough energy to power more than 24,000 homes in a year.

And, if that’s not enough…for every 1 million cell phones recycled, the following can be recovered:

• 75 pounds of gold
• 772 pounds of silver
• 33 pounds of palladium
• 35,274 pounds of copper

Now, multiple those numbers by 130 to reach the 130 million that we toss. Recovering these metals means less mining, less social injustice, less manufacturing leading to less pollution and less depletion of resources.

And, if none of that motivates you, think of this. You’ll reclaim the space in your closet, your desk, or your junk drawer!

• Find a cell phone collection location near you, here at EPA.gov
• Listen to the EPA podcast on this topic
  

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All life depends on water on our big “blue planet”, and while Earth is covered with it, only 1% of all the water on the Earth is actually drinkable.

Because of this, many feel that water will be the next ‘peak oil’ – water scarcity is no longer an issue that effects just the desert southwest, especially in times of drought, in the United States. The good news is that, when we understand and appreciate the importance of water — conserving it and protecting it — we can put less stress on our available water resources and make every drop count.

We tend to take for granted our access to safe, plentiful drinking water from our tap. UNICEF estimates that “over 900 million lack access to it and nearly half of those people are children.” This is why UNICEF is expanding its Tap Project nationwide for 2010. After debuting in New York City just three years ago, the Tap Project concept has caught on.

As part of World Water Week (which runs from March 21 through 27th) UNICEF is conducting the Tap Project to help raise funds for water, sanitation and hygiene programs. They are asking restaurants to sign up to participate and diners to donate $1 to UNICEF for the glass of tap water they usually enjoy for free. Restaurants and patrons can also donate online.

Funds UNICEF collects through the 2010 Tap Project will go to countries and areas UNICEF has identified as among the most in need, including Haiti.

“Clean Water for a Healthy World” is the theme for World Water Day 2010 (March 22nd). The overall goal of the World Water Day 2010 campaign is “to raise the profile of water quality at the political level so that water quality considerations are made alongside those of water quantity.”

In the US, our own water infrastructure received failing grades from the American Society of Civil Engineers last year. By being informed and having a voice in your local, regional and national water issues, businesses and individuals can help ensure safe drinking water for our future generations here at home.

In the workplace, businesses engaged in water conservation can not only save money, but make significant contributions to our secure water future. Learn more about water issues. Start with making every drop count.

Take back your tap and contact your local utility company or water management district/water management board for water conservation and water protection tips that are most useful for your community.

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No doubt, you don’t often come across the word ‘visceral’ in the same sentence as ’sustainability.’

Over here at GreenNurture, we often talk about micro-sustainability, but as for this visceral stuff, it’s certainly making people do a double take on what they could be doing on a small scale.

Since we posted this on SlideShare yesterday, it has been viewed more than a thousand times. In fact we had a message from SlideShare to say they liked it so much they had put it up on their home page, yesterday.  We thought you’d enjoy it here as well!

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This morning, Derrick Mains, CEO of GreenNurture was be featured on Stan Hexom’s show, Energy Dynamics.

Broadcast from the Phoenix studios of KFNX 1100.

Hexom, whose weekly show focuses on topics such as solar, green buildings and energy efficiency, inquired about the role of ‘micro-sustainability’ and how organizations that promote want to go green can get started.

Click on image to see more

Derrick talked about the ’sleeping giant’ that executives could educate and energize in ways that affect the company’s bottom line. “Leaving the light on, or not reporting a broken sprinkler head, not only costs the company money, but ultimately costs jobs.” We need to point to the correlation between micro eco-actions and the bottom line.

He talked of recognition, a rewards mechanism, and pledging. The last, explained Derrick, is under-used; research shows that getting people to make a commitment  has a direct bearing on their long-term actions.

Great Quotes:

“Sustainability is an inside job” – Stan Hexom

“Sustainability is the next dot-com” – Derrick Mains

“Arizona could be the epicenter of the big sustainability movement” - – Derrick Mains

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