Central to our vision for sustainability is playing our role in helping achieve alignment between the sometimes competing interests of profitable markets with the needs of communities and living within environmental limits.

Enlarge Balfour Beatty's 2020 vision and roadmap image - opens in a new window

Developing our Thinking on Sustainability

Sustainable infrastructure is the sum of the many processes through which a profitable and competitive industry delivers built assets to enhance the quality of life and meet stakeholder expectations.

The industry has an opportunity to transform the way that infrastructure is created, by rethinking the way it designs and uses resources to create and maintain assets that meet the needs of society.

Key concepts are partnership and innovation. By engaging with customers, end-users and local communities, a shared understanding of the needs and impacts of schemes can be created, alongside a view of what is technically possible and affordable.

Translating this into reality involves designers, contractors and suppliers working together to embrace new ideas and technology and to generate innovative solutions.

Sustainable construction has focused, historically, on meeting the needs of building and civil engineering schemes such as BREEAM and CEEQUAL in the UK and LEED in the US. These schemes clearly have their role in moving the industry towards delivering more sustainable projects. However, we believe that something far more fundamental is required to ensure that Balfour Beatty itself transitions to true sustainability. Our approach must encompass the characteristics of a growing, international business, with a constantly changing project portfolio and the reality of a Group in which considerable autonomy is given to our operating companies.

It needs to encompass all aspects of our business and extend across the whole project life cycle. During 2008 and 2009, we worked closely with Forum for the Future (www.forumforthefuture.org), to develop and challenge our thinking on sustainability, understand the risks and opportunities it could present to our business, develop a forward looking view of a sustainable Balfour Beatty in 2020 (our vision) and created a plan of how to realise this vision and embed sustainability into the day to day operations of the company (our roadmap).

The Purpose of our Vision and Roadmap

Balfour Beatty aspires to a leadership position in sustainable development in order to deliver strong, reliable growth in long-term shareholder value. During 2009 we developed a Sustainability Vision for 2020, and a detailed Roadmap for all operating companies to follow. We want to ensure that we consistently deliver high professional standards across the Group, and strive to be ambitious in what we can achieve as a sustainable business.

Our Vision and Roadmap is focused on three key areas:

  1. Creating and developing long-term relationships, with our customers
  2. Contributing positively to the communities in which we work
  3. Minimising the impact of our operations on the environment

Our Vision and Roadmap

How were the Vision and Roadmap developed?

There were three main components to the development of the Vision and Roadmap:

  1. Identifying and prioritising the key trends and global issues related to sustainable development that could present opportunities or risks to the company over the next decade. From the availability of skilled labour to the cost of carbon, these issues were fed into the vision to make sure it is achievable in the long term.
  2. Developing a Vision Statement outlining where Balfour Beatty wants to be in 2020. This is our declaration of the contribution we plan to make to sustainable development. Central to the vision is playing our role in helping achieve alignment between the current, sometimes competing interests of profitable markets, the needs of communities and living within environmental limits.
  3. Creating a Roadmap - a strategic action plan that sets out the steps we expect our operating companies to take over the coming years to achieve this vision.

The roadmap details where we aspire to be by 2020 in 10 focus areas covering:

  • Customers
  • Influencing Markets
  • Our people
  • Our supply chains
  • The communities we serve
  • Climate change
  • Waste
  • Water
  • Materials
  • Ecology

31 key issues have been identified within these 10 focus areas. For each issue, the Roadmap identifies three levels of progress:

  • Minimum expectations by 2012 (mandatory first steps for all operating companies)
  • Excellence for 2012 (optional for those operating companies wishing to pursue best practice on a given issue)
  • Our aspirational goal for 2020

Our full Vision and Roadmap is available to download as a PDF from this website.

What next?

A programme to communicate with and gain the appropriate level of understanding amongst our operating companies of the Vision and Roadmap, including their role in making it happen was initiated in 2009 and is expected to be complete in early 2010. Thereafter, we intend to publish the key commitments and targets on which we will be focusing in the run up to 2012 and in realising the vision in 2020.

It will be up to each of our operating companies to determine how these targets will be applied to their business. The Roadmap will be periodically reviewed and updated over time. What is identified as excellence in 2012 could well become the minimum expectations for all operating companies worldwide as we continue on our journey for a truly sustainable business in 2020.