2017 Sustainability Report
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DESCRIPTOR BUILDING A MORE RESILIENT WORLD 2017 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT THE FUTURE IS UNKNOWN. PREPARING FOR IT REQUIRES RESILIENCE. 1 DESCRIPTOR THE FUTURE … THE YEAR NATURAL It is opportunity and disruption. Innovation and obsolescence. Calm and crisis. In a word, DISASTERS SHOOK it is unknown. Preparing for it requires resilience. OUR WORLD Our collective ability to plan for, respond 2017 was one of the most costly to and recover from the unexpected has years, in both lives lost and property never been more important. We live in a destroyed, that our world has world of extreme weather, diminishing experienced in decades. natural resources and rapidly evolving global tensions. Building more resilient institutions, infrastructure and communities is key to progressing toward a more sustainable planet. Many of these events were JULY-SEPTEMBER: Southeast Asia was hit exacerbated by changing with one of the worst monsoon seasons climate conditions, producing in history, causing widespread flooding wetter storms, drier forests, throughout Bangladesh, India, Nepal and and unprecedented storm- Pakistan. By September, an estimated 45 million had been affected and more than water flooding. Many more were the result of human error, 1,000 killed. neglect or outright malice. While 2017 is behind us, the AUGUST: Hurricane Harvey battered Texas, underlying problems of climate Louisiana and parts of Central America, change, extreme weather, causing an estimated $260 billion worth global terrorism, cyber-warfare of damage and hundreds of fatalities. and many other uniquely 21st century threats have just As the United States was still reeling begun to make their mark on from the devastation of Harvey, further east Hurricane Irma began her our world. Anticipating and preparing for the impact they destructive path across the Caribbean will have in the future must be and Florida. a part of every organization’s planning today. At AECOM, we believe that resilience is an SEPTEMBER: Hurricane Maria, a category essential step forward on the five hurricane, made landfall on the island of Dominica. Reaching winds of path to sustainability. 280km/h, causing most damage to the eastern Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and The Bahamas. An earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale hit the Gulf of Tehuantepec, off the coast of Chiapas, southern Mexico. OCTOBER: Fires ignited the United States’ Southern California region, charring over 280,000 acres and destroying over 1,000 structures. 2 3 OUR STORY OF RESILIENCE Resilience is a key pillar in the services we provide our clients and the goals we are pursuing in our own sustainability efforts. While every organization and situation merits its own unique assessment of resiliency considerations and requirements, we believe there are a few, often overlooked principles that bring significant value to every resiliency discussion: IMAGINATIVE, WIDE-RANGING THREAT ANALYSIS; MASSIVE, BOUNDARY-JUMPING PARTNERSHIPS; AND LONG-TERM, HOLISTIC INTEGRATION OF RESILIENCY INTO ALL STRATEGIC PLANNING. In this report, we share some of our experiences responding to the natural disasters of 2017. We highlight some of our most innovative thinking about building a more resilient world. And we describe some of the inspiring work of our own employees who are taking the concept of resilience to heart and bringing solutions to projects and communities all across the globe. 4 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS RESILIENCE IS KEY TO BUILDING A BETTER WORLD. OUR WORLD IS UNPREDICTABLE AND, AS OUR DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL WORLDS CONVERGE, INCREASINGLY 8 16 22 CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CONNECTED AND PREPARING FOR DISASTER IN A WORLD SEA LEVEL RISE KNOWS NO BOUNDARIES SOLVING FROM THE INSIDE OUT COMPLEX. WITH THIS OF EXTREMES 18 Leadership Spotlight: 24 About AECOM CONVERGENCE COMES 10 Project Insights: AECOM Connecting our unique teams anticipate and expertise to tackle 25 Environmental Sustainability BOTH OPPORTUNITY respond in the eye of tomorrow’s challenges Darcy the storm Immerman 27 Strategic Partnerships AND RISK. RESILIENCE Scott Lee 20 Project Insights: Working 28 Reducing our IS ABOUT ANTICIPATING 13 Leadership Spotlight: with cities and clients Carbon Footprint Building organizational globally to mitigate the next THE UNKNOWN SO WE resilience for our people and natural disaster 30 Corporate Responsibility clients Claire Bonham-Carter CAN WEATHER THE Mark Niblett 32 Our Corporate Responsibility Highlights Across the Globe UNEXPECTED AND TACKLE 14 Leadership Spotlight: Resilient in the face of a Safety, Health and 34 THE WORLD’S MOST cyber-attack Environment Ronald “Fog” Hahn and COMPLEX CHALLENGES. Bob Butler 35 Wellness and Career Development Acting Ethically with Integrity MIKE BURKE, CHAIRMAN AND CEO 36 — Inclusion + Diversity 37 38 Enhanced Supply Chain Management Corporate Governance 39 Economic Performance 40 41 GRI Disclosures 6 DESCRIPTOR DESCRIPTOR CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER PREPARING FOR DISASTER IN A WORLD OF EXTREMES In September 2017, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico and propelled 3.4 million residents into a crisis. The Category 5 hurricane raised havoc, downing power lines, destroying homes, knocking out transportation and limiting access to clean water. Building resilience into our institutions, our infrastructure, our systems and our communities has never been more important. This goes beyond standard risk assessment and mitigation planning. It requires a willingness to imagine the unimaginable and create defenses that can weather their occurrence. THE CRISIS HIGHLIGHTED THAT BUILDING RESILIENCE INTO OUR INFRASTRUCTURE AND SYSTEMS HAS NEVER BEEN MORE CRITICAL. FROM NATURAL THREATS TO A POTENTIAL CYBER-ATTACK, RESILIENCE EXPERTS WEIGH IN ON HOW SOME ORGANIZATIONS AND BUSINESSES NOT ONLY SURVIVE, BUT CAN THRIVE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY. 8 9 DESCRIPTOR DESCRIPTOR PREPARING FOR DISASTER IN A WORLD OF EXTREMES CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER PROJECT INSIGHTS: AECOM TEAMS ANTICIPATE AND RESPOND IN THE EYE OF THE STORM Scott Lee from the Water Business Line, shares his insights. Anticipating Natural Disasters: Acting in Puerto Rico: Advancing our learnings: Files were backed up to The intensity of Hurricane Maria With the significant wind safeguard client data and was unprecedented and the damage and flooding along the employees were advised to extent of the damage caught U.S. Gulf Coast from Hurricane Harvey, record-breaking seek shelter. many off guard. Now, nearly rainfall throughout Southeast a year after the storm hit, the Texas and the direct impact Hundreds of AECOM staff island’s power grid remains of Hurricane Irma on Puerto members were deployed to fragile and some remote areas Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and aid in Puerto Rico’s recovery are still without power. Florida, the need for disaster efforts. From packaging recovery personnel to deploy more than 60,000 meals While the team succeeded to these hard-hit areas, the for survivors to working on confronting many challenges, temporary assignments valuable lessons were learned, need was greater than ever. requiring expertise in civil including the need to invest Throughout hurricane structural, power distribution, in redundant power supplies architecture, water/wastewater and the need for better seasons, AECOM’s emergency management teams and local communication processes to or coastal engineering. resilience teams rigorously proactively check on our people. track weather patterns Our local, cross-functional around areas prone to natural resilience team met daily to To enable an integrated provide support before, during approach to disaster relief disasters. We had boots on the ground in several of 2017’s and after the event. efforts, AECOM has created a most devastating events, virtual Disaster Relief Project Alternative office space was including Puerto Rico. Management Organization identified with reliable power (PMO) that will coordinate and and air conditioning, and server bring together our collective Our procedures are aligned access was quickly restored so expertise to disaster relief with U.S. government and local requirements, and we those who were able to work efforts. Our Disaster Relief PMO have multiple contracts with could do so remotely. will enable cross functional teams to quickly act when the United States’ Federal GoFundMe campaigns were disasters happen and anticipate Emergency Management created to support impacted future disasters whether natural, Agency (FEMA) that allow us to colleagues in need, raising a man-made, or combined. rapidly deploy staff. combined US$350,000 in both employee and corporate giving. 10 11 PREPARING FOR DISASTER IN A WORLD OF EXTREMES CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER United States: In addition and other items through registries at retailers such CARING FOR to raising US$350,000 for colleagues affected by as Target and Amazon hurricanes and other natural and offered non-financial resources, such as spare OUR STAFF disasters in 2017, AECOM LEADERSHIP SPOTLIGHT: employees from all over the rooms, cars and more. world contributed toiletries BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL RESILIENCE FOR OUR PEOPLE AND CLIENTS Global Security and Resiliency leader Mark Niblett shares his thoughts to help every organization be agile and efficient when responding to a disruptive event. identifying threats — whether Organizational resilience is about Crisis preparation is a crucial collaborating to anticipate, protect cyber, sociopolitical, physical or subset of resilience planning. against and manage disruptive environmental — before they hit, Anticipation, a well-understood