UK engineering companies have designed a blueprint intended to make their businesses more socially responsible over the next five years.
The new document, called Engineers for sustainability, outlines 47 ways in which the companies – and engineers in general – can take greater account of social and environmental considerations in their daily work.
Anglian Water, BG, Balfour Beatty, Biffa, Conoco, ICI, Jaguar Cars, Railtrack and WS Atkins were among the 16 leading UK companies that helped to draw up the recommendations.
A total of 32 young engineers from the companies were seconded to an ‘Engineer of the 21st century inquiry’ last year to develop the blueprint, which says the engineering profession needs to be ‘jump-started’ into action.
They recommend that any company embarking on an engineering project should bring together all parties with an interest in the project ‘to look beyond the technical challenge and to question the brief with ethical and value-led questions’.
Engineering companies should encourage others, through trade associations and supply chains, to consider sustainable development issues, the report proposes.
It also says the Engineering Council, a charitable body that promotes engineering as a profession, should publish a good practice guide for clients of engineering companies which explains how to take account of sustainable development when commissioning projects. Companies should routinely request full sustainability specifications from suppliers.
All engineering-based businesses should ‘embed participation and consultation, with sustainable development as a standard item, at all stages of a project,’ and the Engineering Council should help to train the companies on how to engage their stakeholders, it adds.
The report also says:
teaching of ethics and values should be ‘fully integrated’ into the training of engineers by 2005
companies should release staff for voluntary work overseas as ‘a means to increase the understanding of sustainability issues more rapidly within their organization’
the Engineering Council should prepare an annual report on the profession’s contribution to sustainability, including case studies, targets and actions for the next year
companies should include sustainability targets in all personal appraisals by 2005.
A spokeswoman for the participants said the report would be ‘widely disseminated within the engineering community’ and would be acted upon. ‘It is not our intention that the report be launched on to a shelf,’ she said.
The report will be sent to networks of young engineers, and the authors hope its new focus on ethical issues ‘will inspire school leavers to contemplate engineering as a career’. The inquiry that led to the blueprint began last September and was convened by the sustainable development charity, Forum for the Future.