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How PMOs Can Contribute to Net Zero Outcomes
At Atkins Realis and Faithful+Gould (Members of the SNC-Lavalin Group) they have been developing PMOs to contribute to society’s greatest challenge – that of achieving Net Zero outcomes. They are already delivering PMOs in UK Government programmes dedicated to Net Zero and these are enabling them to plan and test ideas to mature these services, and to imagine the Net Zero programme office of the future.
They envisage a Net Zero PMO (NZ-PMO) operating in the ‘sponsor’s agent’ (client rep) model – an independent, honest broker, instrumented (MI), open to scrutiny, governance, and a vehicle for intervention.
They design their PMOs using a design tool modelled on a metaphor of the mixing desk – of the 15 to 30 PMO services available from the catalogue, the selected services are dialled up or dialled down depending on the programme objectives. For NZ-PMO, the number of services will move beyond the standard twenty describing the functions, with some specific NZ-related dials not seen in traditional PMOs (e.g. carbon accounting) but hinted at in the Green Project Management movement.
They identified three NZ-PMO maturity levels which are cumulative:
- Simple NZ-PMO– an NZ-aware PMO measuring and reporting behaviour
- Self-improving NZ-PMO, with an accent on culture change
- Systemic NZ-PMO, addressing the NZ expectations scaled to the needs of clients and large investments.
The most mature Systemic NZ-PMO will be designed to support the NZ agenda and deliver NZ outcomes – most likely to appear in major multi-professional team urban build schemes with a plan for embedding NZ technologies. They dial up transformation and tracking of societal outcomes, and are likely to measure contributions to the UN Sustainability Goals.
They envision a NZ-PMO that will:
- Build on the green project management movement in designing its reporting and decision-support services – those gains seen in simple NZ-PMOs
- Generate high engagement of delivery partners, creating shared superordinate goals that are of sufficient vision to drive culture change – gains illustrated in the self-improving NZ-PMOs
- Go further as sponsor’s agent to design and operate Systemic NZ-PMOs that scale for regenerative and transformational influence, being outcomes-measuring, demand-shaping, intervention-provoking and realising societal improvement.
This session was recorded at the London PMO Conference.
Recorded Session
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This was probably one of the most important sessions at the conference because it focused directly on today’s primary existential issue: reducing atmospheric and oceanic carbon (or carbon equivalent).
The main proposition is that the PMO can take a leading role in steering industry, commerce, and government in developing and implementing net-zero policies and strategies. The big questions arise when figuring out how to do this.
The presenters described a range of concepts indicating how PMOs can develop the capabilities to contribute to net-zero programs, and drew on their experience working with government agencies and hundreds of individual buildings.
Basically, they suggest that the PMO, when it has embedded the net-zero tools and techniques, should apply the principles on all projects – not just those defined as “net-zero”. This also implies that the PMO needs the authority to enforce these principles [to do this, I assume they need to have (or have access to) the corresponding technical and commercial knowledge on which to base plans and proposals]. Essentially, it may be the PMO that takes on the job of changing an organisation’s mindset, bringing carbon as an issue into all decision-making and stakeholder management.
It was suggested that net-zero activities are co-ordinated at program rather than project level, to avoid the potential of a solution in one area, obstructing or degrading a good solution in another area. This points to the fact that buildings or estates are composed of interrelated subsystems that must work coherently for optimum efficiency – i.e. a systems engineering approach to net-zero implementations
On the practical side, there were several useful insights:
A template for categorising the PMOs net-zero status:
Add “carbon” to the traditional project status evaluation criteria of cost, time and quality.
Develop and incorporate carbon metrics into the project database. One idea mentioned was a metric of “earned carbon” as a complement to “earned value”.
[No other ideas were discussed, but the representative from Decarbonomics (Annabel Thorne) explained that they have developed an integrated service to aid organisations define, optimise and implement net-zero activities. A reference was provided to the Climate Change Committee website, but this seemed to deal only with measuring progress on adaption to, rather than tackling directly the causes of climate change.]
Structure the carbon impact assessment (carbon accounting) of the entire project, from initial concept and materials choices, through to end-of-life materials reuse and recycling.
Quantify and log any benefits that accrue from any net-zero actions, as this information may assist in attracting more funding for further actions
It was interesting to see the level of thought that has gone into developing methods for achieving net zero in buildings and the roles that the PMO can play, although the examples used are for government-owned buildings rather than commercially owned ones. I assume this is a practical path for establishing models that can eventually be applied in the private sector.
I am left with the following questions of a more general nature, rather than specifically PMO related:
- Building types. The presentation focussed on large government buildings, but the built environment is largely made up of domestic houses, shops, factories and increasingly gargantuan data centres. Are there plans to apply net-zero principles in these situations?
- It is not clear if there are standardised and consistent ways of capturing, processing and analysing the data necessary to apply carbon accounting methods (as described in stages A, B, C, and D above). Is there a program to define baseline specifications for net-zero metrics data collection and processing?
- Obviously, PMO teams will need to develop their understanding of what net-zero actually means and adapt their operations, tools and techniques accordingly, but I think there is a much bigger problem with developing the necessary knowledge and skills in the worlds of architecture, engineering consultants, manufacturers, construction companies installers and building owners/operators, as well as the lawyers and financiers that draft the contracts. What kind of program (or mission) is needed for this task?
Many thanks to Graham Dunn, Conference Reporter for this summary.
Further Reading and Resources
- AtkinsRealis article on the PMO and Net Zero
- Green Project Management – A white paper, “The Project Management Office: A Driver for Sustainability in Projects” [Form to access download]
- Project Management to Net Zero – PM Journal Whitepaper
