Building a sustainable future Skanska

BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Skanska is a major construction and project development group which is based in Sweden and serves the Nordic countries, as well as Europe and North America. Philip Yorke takes a closer look at a company that excels in its chosen disciplines and sets the standards for others in its commitment to sustainability and the environment.

Skanska was founded in Sweden in 1887 and has grown to become one of Scandinavia’s largest construction companies with major operations in building and civil engineering. Skanska is a complex and highly decentralised company. In any one year around 60,000 employees and four times as many subcontractors execute over 10,000 contracts for customers in its home markets alone. Being project based, the organisation is constantly changing shape as its teams of employees and subcontractors form, disband and reform over the lifetime of a project.

Skanska operates four distinct business streams: Construction, Residential development, Commercial Property Development and Infrastructure Development. Construction is the company’s largest business stream in terms of revenue and number of employees. Close collaboration with the group’s other business units and the company’s collective financial resources enable Skanska to take on large, complex projects where few competitors can match its expertise and breadth of know-how.

Building a ‘Deep Green Society’

Today the primary environmental challenges for Skanska are sustainability, safety and social responsibility. The largest business opportunity for the company in the field of sustainable development, is ‘Green Business’. With Green Business, Skanska wants to help build a ‘Deep Green Society’, which is a place where projects have a near-zero environmental impact. Therefore today the company is on a journey to communicate and measure its progress in this area of activity. Skanska’s environmental agenda embraces energy, carbon, materials, water and local impacts.

At Skanska they see sustainability as just another aspect of good business practice. With its decentralised organisation and its ongoing implementation of change, its commitment to contribute to a more sustainable world is resolute. Implementation of its Sustainability Agenda is the responsibility of the company’s line management, supported by corporate professionals and individuals or teams with the appropriate competence in each business unit, that is unless there is a very strong reason for the formation of a specialist team. For example, Skanska’s ethics are championed by a cross-functional Ethics Committee in its home markets and all areas of the company’s Sustainability Agenda have been mapped in this way so that each sector has an appropriate champion.

Pioneering sustainable initiatives

Skanska is an active participant in a number of international sustainability initiatives, which include many significant organisations. Among them is the ‘World Business Council for Sustainable Development’ with whom it has been a member since 1995. The company is also affiliated to the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and the World Green Building Council, of which it is a European Regional Network Partner. In addition, it is the only Nordic company involved in ‘The Price of Wales EU Corporate Leaders Group’, an initiative which supports EU policy-makers in the field of climate change. Skanska also supports green building councils throughout Europe, the USA and Scandinavia.

Recently Sweden’s longest railway tunnel was opened and today provides a key link for Sweden’s west coast railway traffic and it also represents a fine example of Skanska’s contribution to advances in sustainability. Through the twin tunnels, neither of which have sharp curves or inclines, a freight train’s load can be doubled, and the frequency of running multiplied. Therefore instead of carrying four trains per hour, it can now carry 24 trains per hour, with the trains able to accelerate from 80kmph to 200kmph.

Skanska worked closely with both Swedish and international environmental experts for over 20 years on the project, They started by adopting an environmental policy and then began training programmes, during which time the entire Group was certified to the environmental quality certification: ISO 14001. That was in the year 2000 and Skanska was the first global construction company to be environmentally certified. Today Skanska is one of the world’s leading construction and development companies in terms of sustainability and green construction initiatives.

Skanska’s director of soil and rock mechanics, Dr Robert Sturk commented on the complex project for which he was directly involved.

“Firstly, it is possible to build tunnels that are watertight and that meet the strict environmental standards, even in very complex and difficult ground conditions. These are lessons that the entire tunnel world can learn from. Secondly, there is no doubt that managing complex projects such as this demands dedication and collaboration from all third parties involved.

“Many different roles need to interact and our collaboration with the Swedish Transport Administration and other authorities has been excellent throughout the project. Naturally it is also a question of selecting the right method based upon the different conditions, such as the difficult geology in this case. The Swedish company Vinci supplied valuable experience in terms of the drilling and construction of linings with its specialised tunnel boring machines.” n For further details of Skanska’s sustainability programme and its environmental initiatives visit: www.group.skanska.com