Sustainability Works

Guest post from Center for Sustainability Leadership Group member Keith Reester, Director of Public Works, Loveland, CO.

Public Works is about sustainability!

Don’t think so? When is the last time you built a bridge that you planned to last 10 years, we are building 50 years from now today. Fifty years ago John Kennedy was president of the United States, in Canada the Trans-Canada Highway opened, and the Cuban Missile Crisis rocked the world. Our business has always been about taking the long view about building communities and making them safe, interesting, livable, and business friendly. Now granted there are days when it seems that the long view is a long ways away – potholes, trash, storm runoff, and political funding challenges – but we are in the business of building great towns.

For the longest time the three legs of the stool in public works planning were cost, schedule, and quality; but these days we need to think about sustainability as the fourth leg. Just like any change this is a challenge, we’re not used to asking the questions associated with sustainability on the level we ask about the other three legs. It takes practice, patience, and an innovative spirit to lead through the turmoil.

One of the great things about APWA is the tremendous network we share with over 28,000 other professionals that we can tap into to help us along the path of working on sustainability. These links may help you find someone who is nearby or you may have met at an APWA event that might be a tie to aid your effort.

APWA Center for Sustainability: http://www.apwa.net/centerforsustainability
Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure: http://www.sustainableinfrastructure.org/
Institute for Sustainable Communities: http://www.iscvt.org/
Urban Sustainability Directors Network: http://usdn.org
 

Good luck with your efforts!!
 

New Sustainability Resources from the Emerging Leaders Academy Class of 2012.

Each year a small group of public works professionals participate in a year-long Emerging Leaders Academy that provides intensive leadership and management training within the context of public works. The ELA program encourages professional growth through a strong network of peers, and offers an in-depth introduction to APWA at the national, chapter, and branch levels.

Each ELA class selects a topic to focus its class project on and the ELA Class of 2012 focused its work on determining how can APWA integrate sustainable thinking into the public works profession as well as into the culture of APWA?

The goals of the class project focused on increasing awareness of sustainability principals and methods to those in the Public Works profession. The project goals were determined to include the following:

• Investigate currently available tools such as the Center's Framework for Sustainable Communities (http://www.apwa.net/documents/sust/framework_designFINAL.) and ISI's EnvisionTM sustainability rating system (www.sustainableinfrastructure.org)
• Produce a packet of tools that can be distributed to Public Works professionals that would assist them in integrating sustainable practices and policies into their organizations and projects
• Guidance for creating sustainability-focused RFPs
• Sample Board/Council letters to implement sustainable policies into local ordinances
• Video explaining what sustainability means in Public Works and the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure
• Develop a pilot program
• Develop a plan to distribute the packet to Public Works departments throughout the U.S.

The ELA Class of 2012 submitted its final project report in August and presented its findings during APWA Congress & Expo in Anaheim.  The final project report includes several helpful resources including sample council letters, sample RFP language, and an example of a project that used EnvisionTM to evaluate the sustainability of the project.  I encourage you to spend sometime reviewing these resources and thinking about how you can use them to bring more sustainable practices to your community.