PMP lesson · Business Environment · Strategy and value · lesson 2 of 4 · about 6 minutes
Sustainability and social responsibility
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Goal: After this lesson you can recognise environmental, social and governance responsibilities in projects and handle them through the right processes.
1The situation
More than time, cost and scope
The company announced a carbon-reduction strategy. A team member found that recycled steel would cut the robot cell's embodied carbon by 30%, with a 4% cost increase and a two-week delay. Neighbours complained about night-time piling noise. And a news report alleged forced labour at a sub-supplier of cable assemblies.
None of these appear in a classic project triangle. All of them are part of a responsible project.
2ESG in projects
Projects increasingly have to consider environmental, social and governance effects:
Sustainability opportunities and obligations go through the normal processes: change control for changes, risk management for exposures, procurement/compliance channels for supply-chain issues, stakeholder engagement for communities.
3Environmental, social, governance
Environmental
Energy use, materials (recycled steel), waste (hazardous oil), emissions.
Social
Worker safety, community (noise), labour practices in the supply chain, accessibility.
Exam-style question 1. Following a new corporate sustainability strategy, the team finds that recycled-content steel would reduce embodied carbon by 30 percent, with a two-week delay and a four percent cost increase. What should the project manager do?
A. Implement it immediately
B. Ignore it; not in original scope
C. Present the option with its impacts through change control so the sponsor can decide
D. Wait for a formal mandate before evaluating
Show the answer and the decode
Answer: C.
In simple English
A strategy-aligned change with cost and schedule impacts.
What is the question really asking?
How to handle it.
Key words / trigger
“two-week delay … four percent cost increase”
PMP logic
Strategy-driven changes are evaluated and decided through governance.