Our focus for this year’s challenge is to reshape practice by utilising an accreditation system which clients, consultants and contractors would be scored and certified against. Our idea builds upon last years’ submission 21-34, we believe their idea of a ‘stamp’ was great but drives a minimum standard, where scoring could drive continuous improvement. The issue we are trying to solve is that currently there are a lot of existing sustainability and ethical scores and accreditations, but none are used uniformly across the industry, holistic in their approach or universally accepted as best practice. They either assess an organisation or nominated projects but not how an organisation performs both internally and in the work it delivers. Our proposal is to build upon existing systems, linking the scoring with the UN SDGs. Without this accreditation there is no consistent standard to hold clients, consultants and contractors accountable in meeting the four key principles; Responsible, Purposeful, Inclusive, & Regenerative. Our proposal would be carried out in a similar way to the concepts used by LEED and BREAAM that are applied to buildings or projects combined with consistent ESG reporting. Periodic scoring would include both organisational processes and audits of a random subset of projects with a focus on assurance of performance in project delivery. This would prevent a company just nominating a project that will do well in BREAAM or other metric, by assessing a random selection of projects. This would give a holistic view of how the company performs in its own systems and processes and how it takes a sustainable approach into the projects it delivers. This will drive continuous improvement and reduce the potential for a company to perform well against its own ESG targets but deliver poor performing projects. It would encourage delivery companies drive for better outcomes in the projects they deliver and allow the industry to reward good behaviour driving improvement throughout the supply chain. To implement this accreditation we would draw up a set of criteria from across the industry with input from all stakeholders. We propose working with existing institutions such as EWB, ICE, IMechE etc to develop and promote this within the industry. High performing companies would be expected to be early adopters, however as this gradually becomes more accepted across the industry it would become more of a necessity, with companies not following this or reporting high scores losing out on new work (much in the way having poor health and safety scores does now) and potentially funding not being awarded to clients who have low scores. This evaluation system could be adapted and applied to investment institutions, owners, developers, consultants, engineers, contractors, and operations companies to measure responsibility/accountability through the value chain and highlighting those that don’t sign-up or receive poor scores. Ultimately this evaluation system and scoring would contribute to investment decisions in capital projects in the finance/investment and banking industry replacing and unifying a multitude of existing systems.

Our focus for this year’s challenge is reshaping practice, by holding all duty holders accountable in meeting the four key principles; Responsible, Purposeful, Inclusive, & Regenerative. Our proposal is to introduce a sustainability or ethical rating system and 3rd party evaluation for organisations. Organisations would submit data and be interrogated on performance of their organization and their projects against the concepts in the UN SDG’s. This would be carried out in a similar way to the concepts used by LEED and BREAAM that are applied to buildings or projects. The score would be built up from performance across multiple goals, and could include a composite overall score. Periodic scoring would include both organisational processes and audits of a subset of their projects. This evaluation system could be adapted and applied to investment institutions, owners, developers, consultants, engineers, contractors, and operations companies to measure responsibility/accountability through the value chain to make sure and there isn’t a ‘backdoor’ to sustainability. Ultimately this evaluation system and scoring would contribute to investment decisions in capital projects in the finance/investment and banking industry, who would be interested in these scores as indicators of environmental and social risks to projects. For infrastructure delivery organizations it would commercialize sustainability and responsibility as owners, developers, or investment firms will have incentive to select companies with a better score. This idea would drive companies to improve to stay relevant and competitive in the market. The scores and their breakdown could be public, with a breakdown of how the company scored against each criterion that makes up the score. This is built on the idea of getting the financial institutions to drive improvement and ensuring supply chains attached to their investment are measured against a more comprehensive "responsibility".