How to make your sustainable journey count
Virginia Munoz Rucian
Senior Consultant
09 August 2023
The transport infrastructure industry contributes 24% of the total UK greenhouse gas emissions [1] - the biggest contributor across all sectors. From this insight, the sector more acutely understands the importance of its role in contributing to the UK goal to become Net Zero by 2050. This responsibility is not solely to deliver sustainable infrastructure systems for end users across the UK, all businesses operating in the industry – policy making, manufacturing, construction and operations, among others - have an urgent responsibility to look inwards at their own practices, cut emissions and be a part of the solution to climate change.
That is why we started our own sustainable business journey.
Background
Anturas is a consultancy business, providing advisory and assurance services on major infrastructure projects; primarily sustainable transport - active travel, mass rapid transit, heavy rail. The team work on projects internationally and are based in UK, Ireland and Canada.
An international company, Anturas is a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) business which has tripled its headcount in the last 4 years. This rapid growth has required us to optimise our business processes and operations with a focus on sustainable delivery.
Becoming a sustainable business
We began formalising a sustainability plan in 2022 by setting key targets for the business. These targets were set out by our Managing Director (Cath Leech) focusing on getting the business net zero by 2025 and putting net zero at the heart of infrastructure project delivery. Then in 2023, we reached out to several resources available for SMEs, such as Business in the Community and Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce, to formulate our climate change action plan.
This has been a journey in itself. It is not always easy for a small company to direct resources onto non-fee earning work, no matter how important the task is internally. Despite the demands of client work, we knew this was a task where we needed to invest time and resource. There are a number of reasons as to why this is a priority for Anturas; Client and colleagues have increased expectations for businesses to do more to tackle the crisis. Also it is a legal requirement, as SMEs need to become Net Zero by 2050 and will likely be required to report on their climate change targets progress as big companies are. There are also opportunities associated to tackling climate change as business can become more competitive, reduce waste management and find new markets and service offerings.
We started to set up our carbon footprint report by looking at our emissions contributors for the different carbon scopes. The general convention for measuring a carbon footprint is set out in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and divides emissions in 3 Scopes:
Scope 1: Covers all emissions from sources that a company owns or directly controls.
Scope 2: Covers all indirect emissions associated indirectly with a company due to energy purchased for electricity, heating or cooling.
Scope 3: Covers all other indirect emissions associated with a company.
We could see that we are a relatively low emission business; this is because we do not contribute to Scope 1 as we do not produce direct emissions and we do not have company cars; we assume that we have a low emission Scope 2 as we have a medium size Scotland office and a small size Ireland office. With regards to Scope 3 we do have a more impactful contribution due to business travel; whilst being an UK based SME, Anturas has an international business with presence in Ireland and Canada. Anturas champions domestic public transport but overseas opportunities require a certain level of flight transport where the carbon footprint adds up a significant carbon footprint. We are developing travel policies to set up KPIs to limit flights to cut down emissions, but we will also look at offsetting the residual emissions by using reliable carbon offsetting schemes.
A sustainable business for our clients
As part of our sustainability journey, Anturas recognises its active role as a key advisor to client organisations and strives to create value added for a de-carbonised industry. Within our service offering we are committed to include the tools that will help to lower carbon emissions and achieve net zero goals.
PAS 2080
One of these powerful tools is PAS 2080 which is the first carbon management standard for infrastructure. Our Anturas colleagues will use this standard where possible to integrate carbon management into decision making from inception to the end of life of a project. Looking to our commissions under the lens of PAS 2080 will help set the standards and KPIs to place sustainability at the core of our delivery.
NEC Secondary Option Clause X29
Another interesting tool we will advise for implementation at our project and programme delivery stage, is a contract management tool for NEC contracts; Secondary Option Clause X29. This contractual tool helps the parties of an infrastructure contract in achieving net zero and biodiversity targets. This works via Clients identifying the targets into the Scope and suppliers providing a Climate Change plan setting out the strategy to achieve those targets. If selected there is also a Performance Table that incentivises financially the achievement of performance targets as well.
This way, there is a clear path to achieve these targets and cut down carbon emissions, which is especially important during construction operations as we have discussed before.
Becoming a sustainable business took commitment. Our leadership team made this a business priority and mandated it was driven and implemented by the team, to ensure it was embedded in our culture. This approach has ensured we are a truly sustainable business, beyond accreditations and certifications. Each of our team members understand we all play a part in this journey and have pledged their commitment to act sustainably.
We hope – and expect - to see all businesses become increasingly sustainable and embed this in their continuous improvement efforts, as this is an ongoing commitment we must make. We are on this journey together, no matter whether you are a SME, large corporation, private sector or public body. Together we will succeed in achieving Net Zero by 2050 and we will be able to say that we were part of the solution for Climate Change.
[1] 2020 UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Final Figures (publishing.service.gov.uk)
