White House visit: the Road to Sustainability George Crombie, MPA, BCEEM, PWLF Senior Faculty Member, Public Works Administration Norwich University, School of Graduate Studies APWA Immediate Past President n 2009, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to reduce energy and cut greenhouse emissions. On March 9, 2012, I was invited to a meeting at the White House to represent APWA. The meeting delegates included top officials in government, the private sector and the academic community. CEOs of the major engineering firms in the country were present. The Federal Government was represented by senior White House Staff, the President’s Environment Council, Office of Management and Budget, Defense Department, General Services Administration, Federal Highway Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Housing and Urban Development. As reported by Engineering News Record, the meeting structure was an experiment by the Obama Administration to bring together a group of high-level officials in a tabletop setting to gather information on how best to implement sustainable infrastructure at the federal level.
Meeting highlights and thoughts Sustainability is here to stay. Both outside participants and government officials understand the importance of sustainability in fostering economic prosperity, energy security, and a sustainable environment. Diminishing natural resources, exponential population growth, depleting water resources, and high concentrations of greenhouse gases are all contributing 56 APWA Reporter
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factors towards the need to rebuild in a sustainable manner. The Department of Defense is a leader at the federal level in sustainable initiatives. They see implementing sustainability as a national security priority. One of the many ideas raised at the meeting was showcasing sustainable projects at Department of Defense facilities for those interested in learning and seeing applied sustainable projects. One of the challenges to the federal procurement process that got a lot of attention was the importance of writing procurement specifications that measured the life-cycle costs of a project. By developing sustainable procurement specifications, it would create a level playing field ensuring that sustainable projects were competitive. It is difficult now for a contractor to propose innovative and sustainable projects under current bid proposal requirements in many federal agencies. The word integration was used in describing the importance of looking at projects in a holistic manner. Infrastructure is interconnected and federal agencies are beginning to work together on sustainable projects. I continue to believe that diversity in public works is not a liability but rather an asset. In order to build sustainable projects in the forthcoming decades, those agencies that are integrated will have far more opportunities to take advantage of developing sustainable projects. If you examine the history of public works, integration was understood a long
time ago, but through social, political, and other circumstances many public works agencies were broken up. I anticipate we will see a reversal of this trend to more consolidation in the future. We are already seeing this trend in the consolidation of consulting engineering firms and other businesses. An agency with a diversity of skills and a systems thinking approach will have a competitive advantage in the future. There was thought given to the importance of educating society on sustainability. Too often the focus is on solutions like improving the infrastructure rather than why sustainability is important to the well-being of society and the planet in the long run. Citizens need to understand why we must become sustainable in order for their support in sustainable programs. For example, if a community understands that a changing climate will increase rainfall intensity, then the public will be more inclined to comprehend how flood hazard resources should be distributed. A national sustainability policy was discussed that would create regulations to foster sustainability. As an example, the Clean Water Act created the catalyst in creating a national program to improve water quality. A nationwide sustainability policy would provide for a level playing field in sustainable development. Present business practices do not always take into account true externality costs, and the costs of many products do not reflect the true costs to society, longterm economic prosperity, and costs to the environment. In many instances
