Building Sustainability Impacts from the Bottom Up: Identifying Sustainability Impacts throughout a Geotechnical Company

Luke Deamer, Jacquetta Lee, Mike Mulheron and James De Waele
Additional contact information
Luke Deamer: Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Jacquetta Lee: Centre for Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
Mike Mulheron: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK
James De Waele: Keller Group plc, 2nd Floor, 2 Kingdom Street, London W2 6BD, UK

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-28

Abstract: Geotechnical contractors install and repair foundations for buildings and large infrastructure projects. Previously, geotechnical companies have typically focused on sustainability improvements on individual construction projects, with a primary focus on improving the environmental sustainability of site operations. However, the activities of geotechnical companies have sustainability impacts far beyond what they do on site. In the context of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whole company sustainability must also address social and economic sustainability. This paper therefore explores all the processes carried out across a geotechnical company, from human resources through to site operations, assessing their impact against the SDGs using a pedigree matrix approach. Through this investigation, we see that geotechnical companies impact every SDG in some way. There is a strong focus on health and well-being (SDG 4) and economic sustainability (SDG 8) throughout a geotechnical company. Some functions, such as procurement, impact a broad range of SDGs, whilst others, such as HR, mostly only impact social or environmental sustainability. Overall, this approach highlights which processes in each function have the greatest impact on the overall sustainability of the company. It also reveals more sustainability impacts than previous top-down approaches. This means geotechnical contractors can better target sustainability improvements in specific parts of their business, making sustainability relevant to each department. It also aims to empower employees to improve the sustainability of their own day-to-day processes.

Keywords: construction; engineering; company; sustainability; SDGs; ESG; geotechnical (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/11981/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/21/11981/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:21:p:11981-:d:668450

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().