ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & FUTURE VERSIONS

The Sustainability Action Plan’s primary intention is to build accountability into our design process. We are doubling down on our commitments and creating a plan to fulfill those essential mandates. We are aligning our design process, projects, and intended outcomes with the highest aspirations of our industry to accelerate toward a healthier future.

Moving forward, we look to also focus on topics that are not fully covered by these commitments. Our explorations have already begun, and topics are summarized below. We will provide progress updates in the next version of our SAP.

OPERATIONAL IMPACTS & OPPORTUNITIES

From carbon emissions to power our offices to business travel, purchasing, and waste generation, our office operations have an environmental footprint. EwingCole’s SAP more closely scrutinizes our project portfolio because its potential environmental impact is significantly higher than our operational footprint. With these initiatives underway, our team is looking inward, evaluating our impact, and providing an example to ourselves, our clients, and our peers throughout the industry. In 2023, we will build a team from our 450 employees across nine office locations to develop a Sustainable Operations Plan. The core content of this plan will fall into three categories:

– Carbon footprint – Scopes 1, Scope 2, and a minimum of business travel from Scope 3

– Purchasing and Policies

– Water footprint calculation for each location

Carbon footprint – Scopes 1, Scope 2, and a minimum of business travel from Scope 3

Purchasing and Policies

Water footprint calculation for each location

Layers That Cross All Commitments

Resiliency and wellness are cross-cutting, interdisciplinary topics that connect with each of our four sustainability commitments in different ways. As well as our growing awareness of social inequity in design, resiliency and wellness tether us to two of our three firmwide goals: a deep connection to place and regenerative design.

Resiliency

The Resilient Design Institute defines resilience as, “the capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to maintain or regain functionality and vitality in the face of stress or disturbance. It is the capacity to bounce back after a disturbance or interruption.”

From a climate change standpoint, resilient design differs from sustainability in that resilient strategies aim to protect resources from changes that are already occurring. Sustainable design strategies aim to reduce future changes. As Jason Mark, Editor in Chief of Sierra Magazine puts it, addressing both resiliency and sustainability is “managing the unavoidable while working to avoid the unmanageable…”

Where we are heading: Our structural engineers, MEP engineers, interior designers, and architects are working together to further define best practices for resilient design throughout varying climate regions and geographic locations.

Wellness and Health

Many variables and conditions influence both physical and mental human health. The Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) describe these variables across five primary domains: healthcare access and quality, education access and quality, social and community context, economic stability, and neighborhood and built environment. As highlighted within several SDOH domains, human health depends upon the health of the natural and built environment.

While wellness is one of several topics within the overall umbrella of sustainability, it is also its own constellation of sub-topics:

Where we are heading: While our work has been based on human health and the human experience for decades, our next steps are to 1) more clearly defining baseline, best practice, and aspirational requirements for human health and wellbeing across our market sectors, and

2) expand our focus on health beyond the building occupants to all people impacted by and working within the design and construction industry.

Every Ending Is A New Beginning

We seek to better ourselves, our work, and our influence in all that we do. Striving for continuous improvement is in our DNA, and holding ourselves accountable to the AIA 2030 Commitment, AIA Materials Pledge, SE 2050 Commitment, and MEP 2040 Commitment gives us the foundation to track that improvement. We will experience periods of linear progress, forge through slow-downs, and celebrate positive change. Each stage points us toward our overall goal and the ability to scale our impact.