Profile: Maria Atkinson, global head of sustainability, Lend Lease
Maria Atkinson heads the 10-strong global sustainability team at Lend Lease. She talks to Shaun Drummond about her role and the challenges ahead
How would you describe your role at Lend Lease?
There’s two parts to the role. One is to ensure we meet our obligations in terms of sustainability reporting, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibilities. Then there is the need to be quite strategic about thinking of change that has to occur and then implementing change within the business, as well as finding new opportunities for the business.
What are some of your major challenges in this role?
I think most challenging is the diversity of our business. Our activities span three major geographies: Asia-Pacific, the US and the UK, and more than 40 countries. So I need to keep pace with the kind of change that we’re seeing through legislation in more progressive countries that are very focused on government policy and regulation, like the UK. By contrast, in the US there’s a vacuum of government policy and regulation and it’s all about business opportunity and markets.
I guess without that sort of regulatory direction on sustainability issues you’ve got to kind of second-guess how you should be approaching sustainability.
Absolutely. I think that reinforces the strategic nature of my role. The other point is that it’s moving at such a pace.
How common is a position like yours now?
When I graduated absolutely no-one in my environmental science degree had a job as a graduate. That’s many moons ago, but it was typical of the fact that environmental sustainability was an emerging area of business activity whereas recently sustainability has become a ‘must have’ core function.
It’s similar to the evolution of HR. Originally, big corporates probably had HR specialists that were external to the organisation, then they eventually realised the value of having an HR function within an organisation, and then the HR role increased to strategic learning and development, strategic improvement and retention.
What part do you think those involved in managing risks and the audit function can play in introducing a sustainable business?
When you unpack sustainability it actually fits within plenty of the traditional functions and they have to come up-to-speed with a new way of doing things. For example, the lawyers, the leaders, the general counsel, have to take responsibility for sustainability reporting and disclosure. IT departments have to change systems to be measuring things they wouldn’t otherwise have predicted to have to measure and report on; similar to HR.
I think the next 10 years is really about ensuring there is sustainability education and better competency within these traditional functions and I’d include audit and reporting in that.
How much of what is being claimed now in the name of sustainability is still ‘greenwash’?
Traditionally the trend has been that organisations, whether they’re government or industry, have prepared a sustainability report as something that’s quite separate. But I think the community is so cynical of a separate, branded marketing exercise that we’ve seen a new trend towards sustainability being embedded in traditional reporting requirements. Once you’ve moved sustainability from a separate marketing document into your annual report, you immediately have to comply with the auditing governance of an annual report disclosure.
And therefore I can’t just say that we’ve estimated our electricity consumption and greenhouse emissions. I think that’s where we’ve moved into the risk and auditing functions and we really do need the support and understanding of those functions when they are interrogating the numbers.
How much is it possible to do that now? I understand there’re quite a lot of standards out there for
sustainability reporting.
There’s not really one guide book. You haven’t got one place to go. It’s still emerging. For example in terms of environmental measures there’s pretty much consistency on metrics and measures for kilowatts for electricity but there’s still debate on the calculation of greenhouse emissions. So we tend to reference the large global [standards], whether it’s United Nations or World Business Council for Sustainable Development. We try to choose organisations with a reputation and to refer to their methodology rather than our own, cooked-up methods.
Is that an issue for anyone conducting audits of sustainability reports – that there’s no one standard being adhered to?
I think there’re two things. Firstly, the number reported – can I find the number, can I interrogate that the number is based on a document trail. Then, is that number an accurate way of reporting that claim or statement. I think that’s the area that we haven’t had enough interrogation of. We must always refer to a third-party statement or endorsement of the methodology or the guidelines. I think auditors need to be aware because that’s constantly changing and you have to interrogate that as well.
Is there any need there for any further narrowing down of what are the sort of basic standards that you should be applying?
It’s very ad hoc at the moment, probably because the measures are so diverse. Take electricity: is that gas, is that hydro, is that coal, is that nuclear? Each one of those has a different greenhouse coefficient and while you’d think that number would be standard, each country has made up its own coefficient. So there needs to be a body that starts to interrogate this. That’s certainly what the Kyoto Protocol is all about: identifying international standards for carbon accounting. But that’s just one bit of a million pieces in the puzzle.
There also needs to be the same kind of global interrogation of something as simple as philanthropic giving. People refer to 1 per cent of pre-tax dollars as being a good philanthropic contribution to community activities. But define the dollar: is that a dollar in actual cash given or is that in kind?
So there’s no sort of central authority for such standards?
That’s right. So then there’s the question about where this central authority should sit. I think it should come from the auditing community because I think the responsibility, particularly for social metrics, should come from areas of expertise that are used to finding a number that measures something, and a number that is robust enough to report on and have consistency in reporting.
In terms of sustainability, how do you define that?
At the moment we know that there are real environmental issues. The planet is in crisis. I think for 10 years we’ve been trying to mitigate our environmental impact. Now we’re saying the environmental impacts are so significant we have to move to restoring the environment. So we actually have to have a positive impact on the planet rather than just mitigating a negative impact.
But there is less clarity around the other side of sustainability – the social side. We have an obligation to improve the environmental conditions of the planet globally and locally but we also have a governance requirement around our social obligations and social reporting.
Should sustainability be part of a risk manager’s job and how much of your role is really managing risks anyway?
I can only relate this to Lend Lease risk managers, but I think traditionally their role has been to try to put out fires. They create a matrix that defines what the risk is and they set up processes and competencies for people to be able to identify and obviously avoid risk. But much of our most recent work has been working to identify potential risks in the environment area. So for example in Florida, are we going to consider a project in a location that is predicted to experience more severe weather? Interpreting environmental as well as social and ethical risks is a key role of my group. In fact we’re leading it rather than the risk manager leading it.
Do they have any part to play?
Well they have a huge impact. My 2 o’clock meeting this afternoon is with the risk team. They tend to implement processes and systems for reporting and identifying risk and so we work closely with that function. But we are still the ones that are providing the intellectual property on what kinds of things we should be developing processes and responses for.
Will that change?
I hope so. I don’t think that we should build a sustainability empire. I really do believe that a sustainability competency has to go into core functions and that those guys need to be thinking of this stuff.
It appears to be a strong refrain as well among risk managers that this concept must become part of management’s basic thinking. Do you think it goes in both directions?
I think we’ve focused for a long time on building competency and capability of CEOs and those in senior roles but we haven’t spent enough time working through the institutions to educate our line managers and those in middle management. After all, those in senior roles are not actually implementing or changing the way something is being delivered. But you have to ask why sustainability is not a core competency function at schools and universities.
Why do you think that is?
Well I think it’s a lack of understanding. It’s like a vessel that people have loaded a whole bunch of environmental and social stuff into. While ever we do that and don’t break it apart, we end up with this kind of “ooh I’ve got this special sustainability knowledge that you don’t have” situation, which is counter-productive.
How have the skills required and what is being asked of you changed?
For 10 years it was advocating the need for change. Now we spend a lot of time sponsoring and supporting change that is already occurring. So we’ve moved from a call to action to supporting the action. I think that’s a big shift.
So you need to put that into action now.
People still need inspiration and people love to hear of success so when you do the call to action it’s a continual drive for doing things better. In our sector we’ve just got so far to go. It’s frightening.
Can you give some examples.
Well I think we’ve been playing on the fringes and we haven’t completely changed the way we design and operate the built form. We keep coming up with innovation that tweaks but doesn’t ever fundamentally re-engineer the entire process.
Take concrete, steel,aluminium and glass. Each one of them is so carbon intensive to make.
You can build a building without those four key elements but there’s challenges. Clearly we are going to have to find another way. We need to have to look at re engineering the entire supply chain; we need to address the choice of materials form sustainable timber to non toxic plastics and products.
So far we’ve treated the supply chain as a commodity that’s provided to us and over which we have no influence. Now we’re starting to think ‘well now we want something different, we have to work with the supply chain’. So I think that’s a massive challenge.
It’s also a most exciting opportunity for our business. But how do you start? Well we’re starting in January by visiting Interface, Sunpower and other big players to ask how they did it, or how they are doing it – bringing about successful change. We have only just started on that.
What would be the sort of materials that you could replace those with?
We haven’t got all the answers yet but for example we imagine a world without concrete because if concrete has a cement component it has such a significant greenhouse contribution. We need to think of alternative material.
At the same time we face increases in costs of electricity, scarcity of water, scarcity of fundamental resources like silica for glass, to name just one.
In the last 12 months Lend Lease has set up a Ventures business that is looking to find ways to do it differently; looking at alternative building products and materials, as well as alternative heating and cooling systems. We’re out there shopping.
What is the usual career path to your position, and is it changing?
I came out of an environmental science degree and a traditional environmental consulting background where I used to write reports about the environmental impacts of activities as diverse as a highway or a land development. Then I moved into environmental management within the property industry.
But I have a call for action: I think risk managers and auditors have great insights into operations and understand the right questions to ask on meaningful measures, and it’s time for them to be working on what are the right sustainability measures that are meaningful. To move into a sustainability role with a risk or an auditing background would be a perfect career path.
Maria Atkinson will be speaking at the Institute of Internal Auditors – Australia’s South Pacific and Asia Conference (SOPAC), which will be held on 2–5 March at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre
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