Designing And Building For Sustainability

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Alexandre L'Heureux, President and CEO at WSP Global

What is the current scenario of sustainability approach? Sustainability was at the top of the agenda pre-COVID-19. But as the pandemic starts to recede, I believe that we need to push even harder. We need to use this crisis as an opportunity to take the steps necessary to evolve. I think what this pandemic has shown is how vulnerable we are as a society, everywhere in the world. Governments and society responded immediately to COVID-19 because we had no choice, frankly—whereas climate change is oftentimes viewed as something that we can deal with tomorrow. What should be the way forward? We need to match closely the long-term interests that this industry has had around climate change with the future needs of the cities that we will be designing. At WSP, we have a program that we call Future Ready. We’re challenging each and every professional to design for what we need today but also for the needs of the future. Just as an example, skyscrapers are the pyramids of the future. They’re not going anywhere. So when you make the effort to build something, to design something, you need to think about future needs. The building codes will change in London, for instance, in the next 30 or 40 years, with global warming. So we need to think about the long-term impact of climate change. What are the lessons learnt from this pandemic? I believe that this pandemic has demonstrated that we are vulnerable and we need to think about the future. I think this is, for us, a no-regret step—but there are many others that we can take into consideration. We need to adopt a risk-based life-cycle-cost approach, including maintenance and energy. We need to assess the climate risk associated with both operational projects and those in development. Source: www.mckinsey.com

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Tags : design Interviews Sustainability building Covid19 pandemic WSP Global