Engineers are often not equipped and empowered to think holistically about the impact of their designs over the full life cycle. In most cases, engineers only have control over one small part of the overall design process and consideration across the supply chain and for the full life cycle is difficult. This can be a concern in emerging technology areas, where the negative side effects of otherwise exciting, sustainable designs are not yet fully realised. In response to this problem, our team has developed a simple tool for engineers to document that they have considered the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) impacts at all stages of a product's life cycle and across the supply chain. Similar to a Risk Register or Quality Management Plan, this tool would become an embedded part of every design project and would promote more holistic thinking. Looking at the specific case study of material resourcing for electric vehicles, our team has drawn out questions that might be asked of an engineer to qualify the social and environmental impacts of each stage of the design. Each step will identify educational resources that the engineer could follow to improve their understanding and will prompt a moment of reflection: “Is there an opportunity to change our design to improve this score? And is there a broader industry opportunity to improve this score?” Each step of the tool will be rated with an ESG score on a 5-point integer scale from –2 to +2. A negative score represents regenerative practices, a score of 0 would reflect a neutral impact, and a positive score identifies harmful impacts and areas for improvement. The scores of each stage would be weighted and averaged to an overall ESG score for the product design. Similar to a fair-trade label, the score has the opportunity to not only be used “behind the scenes” but could be promoted to consumers in product branding. In this context, the lower the score, the better. The next phase for this tool will be to further develop the questions and resources for other steps of the lifecycle and ultimately adapt the questions/ prompts for global applications across multiple businesses and sectors. One of the key goals of our tool is to empower the engineer to feel that their design is both socially and environmentally responsible, and in areas where it may not be holistically possible, that they are identifying real actions and areas for improvement. The score would roll up these opportunities to companies and clients who may be better equipped to impact industry wide changes. This might include engagement with financial backers, regulators, governments or climate activists. By bringing these groups together through the lens of engineering process, the overall design can only be improved. We are optimistic that a tool like this could reshape engineering to have global responsibility at its core. Team Members: André Reis Bethany Hall Erika Rosenstein Gavin Fraser