Over the next year, as part of our strategy to continually expand our sustainability solutions and commitments, we’ll be reevaluating our strategies and goals. From efforts to fully engage our people to the sustainable solutions we offer our clients, it’s an exciting time to reconfirm how our purpose aligns with an expanded strategy. In the meantime, we’ve reflected on ten key aspects of our sustainability framework and are sharing the 2021 updates aligned with each. The posts linked below include data and stories from the past year that help share a snapshot of our sustainability performance.
Material environmental, social, and economic improvements in our communities
Our work with municipalities directly impacts the environment and communities where we live and the ecosystems around us. As we further develop systems to understand and communicate the outcomes of our work, we also continue to grow and embed sustainable design and planning approaches throughout our practices.
Positive environmental outcomes for our industrial clients
Our teams provide strategic guidance and evaluations, deliver designs, and construct solutions that directly and positively impact communities and the environment. In 2020 we began a process to collect data to represent some of the outcomes from our work for industrial clients, from water recycling to remediation. We continued that effort into 2021 and reflected on a broader spectrum of services, showcasing a handful of the 2021 environmental benefits we delivered for our industrial clients.
Impacting water resources through operations teams
In our Operations & Management (O&M) business, our ultimate goal is to ensure critical water infrastructure systems are running efficiently and sustainably. While there are many metrics and components that encompass a sustainable water treatment or recovery facility, the end result – the amount of safe and clean water – is our ultimate impact.
Assessing the emissions impact from our business operations
Our people are our company’s greatest resource, so we recognize the importance of providing productive and healthy work spaces. Furthermore, we often need to travel to provide consulting and operations solutions for our clients and communities. These activities produce direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and regardless of the source, we aim to continue to reduce the impact of these emissions.
Fewer and better purchases
We have a longstanding history of making improvements in our business operations that both reduce environmental impacts and improve efficiency and processes. Beyond our efforts to assess and reduce the carbon emissions from our business operations, we’ve been evaluating areas of our office supply purchasing since 2016.
The Impact of Our Charitable Giving
Community engagement is at our core and, as part of that, we continually look for ways to increase our impact through charitable giving.
Making a Difference with Our Time
Our employees are eager to make a difference and we want to provide them with a much-needed resource: time. Beyond our daily work, our employees actively engage in their communities across the country.
Creating an engaged and equitable work environment
Our people are our first priority. We believe that only companies with a positive culture can deliver good work. So, we constantly engage in shaping a safe, supportive, equitable, and inclusive workplace, where work-life balance is a must, and where people at any professional level can grow their careers.
A culture of safety
We hold the health and safety of our employees, contractors, clients, and the public in highest regard. Creating a safe work environment is a key behavior that we uphold as part of our core value to put people first. Our commitment to trainings, our incident rate history, and continuous improvement of our systems are indicators of this value.
Investing in our company’s sustainable future
As an employee-owned firm, we continually seek ways to sustain our private ownership model, not only for the benefit of our employees but for the autonomy and sustainability of our firm. Providing more employees with the opportunity to become stockholders aligns with one of our core values to ‘act like owners.’ It also allows us to have more control of our future, allowing us to put our people and principles before profit.
