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
SMART OBJECTIVES:
Bethany Hall:
Support the dissemination of the 'design for sustainability' tool created in my current project, FlyZero, which is closely aligned to the ESG tool discussed and developed by our team through this challenge! FlyZero has been a year long zero-carbon aircraft development feasibility project, for which all of the work is going to be published in various reports in March 2022. When these are published I will try to raise more awareness of this work, and will be sure to take the work forwards into my next engineering role after FlyZero.
I commit to delivering more STEAM outreach this year in schools and other forums, with a strong focus on promoting 'Sustainable STEAM' careers that showcase engineering as problem solving and creativity to try to make it more accessible. FlyZero has given me lots of ideas for content to pose creative challenges for young people on zero-carbon aircraft design, so I will aim to deliver this to at least 3 schools throughout this year.
I aim to use my WISE Young Professionals Board position where I have the platform to advocate for more authentic inclusion and change in Engineering, through blogs, social media campaigns, events and children's competitions. Through this, I aim to continue to raise awareness of how engineering needs to have global responsibility at it's core and drill home the 'responsible, purposeful, inclusive and regenerative' messages home.
Gavin Fraser:
Within the next two months I will educate myself on the sources of critical raw materials for electric vehicles, to better understand the social, environmental and economic impacts on the people who live near these minerals. I will share what I learn with my team.
Within the next three months I will use some of the insights gained through my participation in the EWB challenge to develop a thought paper which takes a more critical look at the rush to electric vehicles in the transit sector, and highlights the ESG concerns that exist at various stages of the vehicle life cycle – e.g. where do the critical raw materials come from, where and how is the power to operate the vehicles generated etc.
Within the next six months I will develop a version of our proposed ESG checklist which could be used in the procurement of transit vehicles and services – this will likely take the form of a questionnaire to be included with Requests for Proposals for proponents to complete. I will engage with my clients to encourage include of the checklist into their RFPs.
André Reis
I will continue to study what changes I can implement to both my personal lifestyle and work practices, to decrease and potentially negate any impact that my actions have on the environment.
Erika Rosenstein
As a result of this challenge, I will continue to seek opportunities to empower engineers to be advocates for sustainable design, even for issues that may feel out of their control.
I will challenge companies and clients to support these types of initiatives even when the result may not be an immediate improvement to the bottom line metrics.