Sustainability and Success Variables in the Project Management Context: An Expert Panel

Abstract

This research identifies the key variables of sustainability in project management and explores the impact of these variables on project success. The methodological approach combined a literature review and an expert panel. The expert panel was conducted in two phases: interviews were conducted with five experts to validate the content of the identified variables, and a forum was held with 11 experts from 10 universities in 6 different countries. Research data were analyzed using content analysis, descriptive statistics, and analytic hierarchy process. Through systematic expert reviews, this research shows a succinct and relevant list of variables and their classification, reflecting the experts’ consensus, which can help practitioners and scholars introduce sustainability into project management. Similarly, the key variables for project success are identified and classified. Finally, the article explores the experts’ perspectives on the impact of sustainability in project success.

Using Certification as a Tool to Develop Sustainability in Project Management

“…This section presents an exhaustive study of the correspondence between sustainability variables as defined by Martens and Carvalho [22], grouped in three dimensions (economic, environmental and social) and management system standards. Table 1 shows a summary.…”

Cradle-to-Cradle in Project Management

“…When it comes to natural or technical resources as identified by PMBoK, this topic has received significant attention in the field of sustainable project management as environmental sustainability is measurable when addressing consumption of hazardous materials, water/ energy consumption and reduction, waste management, reduction of pollution and emissions (Armenia, Dangelico, Nonino, and Pompei, 2019;Kleindorfer, Singhal, Van Wassenhove, 2005;Marcelino-Sádaba, González-Jaen, Pérez-Ezcurdia, 2015;Silvius, Kampinga, Paniagua, Mooi, 2017;Martens, Carvalho, 2017); • Project Integration: According to the study conducted by Martens and Carvalho (2016), Environmental Policies and Resources Saving factor which consists of nine variables such as use of natural resources, management of environmental policies, energy and water consumption and many more is the key factor of sustainability in project management. Their findings demonstrate that project managers focus on the environmental impact of projects and consider environmental standards and policies, particularly in the project initiation phase (Martens and Carvalho, 2016). Another study by (Liu, Kasturiratne and Moizer, 2012) investigated why companies integrate sustainability aspects in their supply chain management and identified the drivers and obstacles on their way.…”

Delivering UN Sustainable Development Goals’ Impact on Infrastructure Projects: An Empirical Study of Senior Executives in the UK Construction Sector

“…Also, unlike the MDGs, the SDGs are focused on monitoring, evaluation and accountability across society, not just at national level, which is why it is critical that the link is made from the "bottom to top", meaning from the delivery of project-level impacts that can be assessed against the national and global targets and indicators. The research presented later shows this cannot currently be achieved, and the evidence [16,17] illustrates that the golden thread from project measurement to national/global level is missing. There is a gap between theory and practice [11,13].…”

“…This introduces the concept that project success definition needs to consider success against the triple bottom line (TBL) [7][8][9] of social, environmental (or ecological) and economic (or financial) effects, otherwise noted as the "three pillars" concept of "people, profit and the planet" [7][8][9]. However, the overemphasis on the last of the TBL criteria, namely finance, brings us to the root of the problem of measuring projects' SDG impact [16,17]. This is because the crux of the project reporting problem lies with the dominance of accounting tools, which have been the preeminent business method of reporting business success for over 500 years since Luca Paccioli first published his papers on double entry bookkeeping [31].…”