Our ESG Strategy
Our action plan to do better and be better
It all starts with a plan
With ESG principles embedded into everything we do, the goal of our Sustainable Legacies strategy is straightforward: to ensure that the way we run our business, and the work we do in partnership with our clients, leaves a positive, lasting impact for communities and our planet.
We’ve done a lot of work on our own ESG commitments, and that experience is enriching our offer to clients to help you develop your own Sustainable Legacies strategies. Only by working together can we achieve our goal of delivering a better world.
Our Sustainability Report highlights our ongoing commitment to embedding leading sustainability, resilience and governance practices in everything that we do.
Delivering Sustainable Legacies
When we launched our Sustainable Legacies strategy, we made a number of commitments to help us achieve our goals. As we move forward, we’re taking stock of our progress, assessing what more needs to be done, and reviewing our objectives.
Winner
Natural Capital Laboratory, Verdantix Innovation Excellence Award for Sustainability Strategy Implementation
Embed sustainable development and resilience across our work
Embedding sustainable development and resilience across our teams and work means investing in know-how, skills and tools – and measuring progress. We’ve made ESG training mandatory for all employees, are leading a taskforce on ESG measurement and transparency for the Sustainable Markets Initiative taskforce, and invested in developing new processes and digital platforms such as ScopeX™, designed to reduce carbon impacts by at least 50% on major projects — from urban planning to asset management.
To help clients navigate the urgent and changing demands in this space, we’ve launched our global ESG advisory offering. This offers support and guidance through the entire lifecycle from organizational-wide strategy through to the detail of the project-level technical ESG services required to deliver on their ambitious visions.
Improve social outcomes
Embedding sustainable development and resilience across our teams To deliver social value through our business, our teams must reflect the diversity of the clients and communities we serve. We set a target to ensure women comprise at least 20% of senior leadership roles and at least 35% of the overall workforce and are making progress towards this, with 18% women in leadership roles and 33% of our overall workforce being women. We’ve also set a number of non-gender diversity goals this year, as relevant to their specific regions and countries. To make sure we’re meeting our ambitions, we’ve set up a global social value group to support best practice and ensure that each region of our business is aligned on these practices.
We created and piloted a Social Value Dashboard in our UK and Ireland business to measure and quantify social value results. We hope to expand this dashboard to other regions in the future to better measure and improve on social value across our regions.
$96m
From 2019–2020 our UK+Ireland business delivered c.$96M of positive social value to the community.
2040
One of the first companies in the world to have emissions reduction targets approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative to reach science-based net zero by 2040
Achieve net zero carbon
Following our achievement of operational net zero in 2021, we will continue to remain operationally net zero. It’s important to us to follow the science, and we’ve therefore had our more ambitious emissions reduction targets approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative to reach science-based net zero by 2040. This includes a 60% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions and 50% reduction of Scope 3 emissions by 2030, as well as 90% reduction in total emissions by 2040.
We’re progressing Scope 1 and 2 emissions reductions partly through increased proportion of renewable energy usage, including 100% usage in North American offices currently. We’re implementing our Travel with Purpose program to reduce business travel. We’re also developing carbon reduction targets in partnership with our supply chain, working with over 7,000 suppliers and trade contractors who make up over 80% of our total Scope 3 emissions.
19
We are one of 19 companies to have been awarded the 2022 Terra Carta Seal by the Sustainable Markets Initiative for our commitment to sustainability and exemplifying leadership in advancing environmental stewardship industrywide.
Enhance governance
Governance is the foundation for effective corporate and business ESG management. To this end, we’ve incorporated ESG-related KPIs into our CEO and officer compensation, and built sustainability performance into our financial metrics. Our global ESG Reports are published annually, incorporating TCFD and SASB disclosure standards. We are also reviewing our ESG-related risk framework annually (implemented in 2021), and developing recommendations for respective updates, including how we can better support clients navigate the global clean energy transition equitably and efficiently.
Need help developing your ESG strategy?
Our ESG advisory services team can help you and your organisation develop your own ESG strategy.
