How Project Teams Are Building Climate-Resilient Infrastructure

STEVE HENDERSHOT
For decades, climate-change interventions have focused on “How do we slow, stop or reverse it?” But the effects of climate change already are endangering communities. For instance, extreme flooding is on the rise around the world, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That means that—on top of mitigation projects, like those that cut carbon emissions—there’s an urgent need for initiatives that develop infrastructure capable of standing up to an increasingly hostile climate. Today we’ll meet two project leaders looking to accelerate those efforts.

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This is Projectified. I’m Steve Hendershot.

Developing more sustainable infrastructure isn’t just good for people and the planet. It’s a business imperative. A new study from an institute connected to the EDHEC Business School estimates that unless countries successfully shift to more sustainable infrastructure by midcentury, project investors could lose 600 billion US dollars—and that the net value of infrastructure assets could fall by 140 billion US dollars.

That’s the backdrop for today’s conversation about climate-resilient infrastructure projects. From highways to high-rise buildings, these assets are designed and built to help communities withstand the worst effects of flooding and other climate-related threats. The success of these projects hinges on innovative designs and materials—and the ability to empower local stakeholders. Let’s dive deeper with project leaders who specialize in making sure these climate-critical initiatives deliver long-term value.

Projectified’s Hannah LaBelle spoke to Bernadette Fitzgerald, the director of sustainability and climate change at global engineering company WSP in Australia. She’s in Melbourne. Bernadette discussed how project teams are bringing stakeholders together so they can seize ownership and become true problem solvers when it comes to climate-resilient infrastructure.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

HANNAH LABELLE
Bernadette, I want to start by talking about your role as the director of sustainability and climate change. What does your job entail?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
I’m responsible for the technical and commercial performance of my team. But I’m also an engineer, and I spend a lot of my time working on major infrastructure and property projects. My role on those projects is generally as a sustainability and climate change lead, and within climate change specifically, to help our clients understand the vulnerabilities that might exist in their projects and in the communities around their projects. And to help plan out appropriate adaptation strategies and interventions. I’m not an expert in all things, but my role is to help really build a collective understanding and transparency around the potential impacts of climate change. So it might seem really obvious, but it’s actually really hard sometimes to get project teams and clients to just talk about potential vulnerabilities to climate change that might exist in their project, their asset or at a system level. And then to plan out appropriate responses to that.

HANNAH LABELLE
You’ve worked in these infrastructure projects for over a decade. So how have you seen these projects change, given the increasing effects of climate change?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
I started working in sustainability in 2007. And at the time, I thought I’d fix climate change. Probably not on my own. I thought maybe there might be a couple of other people who would get out there and do something about it. And, look, I think there is a lot of action there. But it was probably in 2009 I first heard this term: climate change resilience. This is now emerging into a separate area of sustainability services, and we have very different types of people that are beginning to work in those areas. I’m an engineer, but we’re actually seeing people who are coming into this space from a risk-planning background and stakeholder engagement backgrounds as well. I actually see the private sector as being much more evolved in this space. Whereas infrastructure tends to be owned and procured by government agencies, and the climate change impacts on those types of infrastructure can be much more systemic. And they’re across often a much broader geography as well.

So a good example of that sort of systemic-type failure is a river. We’ve had a lot of flooding in Australia over the last few years. A river floods, and potentially that causes a flood to a substation. The substation is the main power supply for a water treatment plant. And so we end up with an outcome that the flood means that there’s not water being treated for the consumption of the region. That impact can be quite separate from the initial flooding outcome, and it can be across a much broader area of infrastructure.

HANNAH LABELLE
With all this in mind, what would you say is the biggest challenge project professionals face on climate-resilient infrastructure projects?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
Probably the biggest challenge is that there’s not a clear view as an engineer on what you’re supposed to design for for climate change. So it’s a bit more wobbly than that, and you have to work through that with the client. The other challenge is that people don’t really want to know what they don’t want to know because that impacts project cost and viability and all of those sorts of things.

It’s also around not having a clear systemic view as well. So I talked about the example of a river failing and then multiple things coming from that. At this point, I think we’ve got a level of understanding at an asset level on what might happen. But we don’t really have that systemic approach as well. That needs to be led, I guess, more broadly as an intergovernment- or interagency-based view as well. Who is responsible in that situation with the river? Is it the water authority? Is that the energy agency? Is it the people responsible for flood management? And they will often all sit within different groups within government or within public service. And we have to actually try and get that synergy between the different agencies to actually start to have those conversations and plan those things out.

HANNAH LABELLE
Have you ever faced any of these challenges in a project? How did you and the team keep that overall view of the infrastructure’s impact?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
An example of that is probably a rail project I was working on a few years ago where our project was to drop a road below a rail line. And that was a great outcome because it separated the road and the rail. But it also increased flooding of that road. And, actually, with climate change factored in, it actually got quite deep. At some points with more frequent storm events as well, it would become inaccessible. Rather than sort of not acknowledge that issue, we did really early in the project. And with our client, we’ve sort of got a good understanding of what was going to happen there, and we were actually able to engage with emergency services in the area and start to plan out what alternate routes would exist in the event that that road was closed because of a flooding event. So it’s not ideal. We would have liked to not have a road that flooded. But in this case, we were actually able to make sure that there were a really quick change over of processes so that the ambulances could still get to the hospital, and people could still get through to the most critical infrastructure they needed at the times when that might happen. It’s not always about fixing it. It’s about trying to work through scenarios and make sure an understanding of the potential risk is there and handed over, I guess, to the people who have to operationally work with that as well.

HANNAH LABELLE
Some big skills there with stakeholder engagement, communication and risk. So would you say that maybe these kind of fall under the top must-have skills for leading these infrastructure projects with climate resilience? Or what skills would you call out as the top ones that project professionals need when you’re leading these projects?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
The main thing I see with people who work in climate change resilience, and also just really good project leads, are people who are not afraid to ask questions because they’re happy to work through the responses. Great communicators, as you’ve highlighted, Hannah, is a big part of that. Good project leads provide a safe space as well to make those conversations happen and [be] productive. But also, I think climate professionals and also project leads need to have a general view of the science. So they need to understand generally what’s going on with climate change, what are those big things that are going on?

My team who work in climate change resilience, we have engineers. I’m an engineer. We have a former police officer. She’s fantastic at understanding communities and impacts and emergency services. We have an economist who can start to think about what are the impacts on [the] supply chain and how does that work? Drought impacts on regional communities. How do you actually make more robust decisions around what you might be providing in those communities? We have an academic who specializes in urban heat island effects. We have a city planner. We have a climate scientist—so really broad kind of people working in this space. But really trying to pull together to collectively have a better understanding of the potential impacts and ways we can actually build resilience.

HANNAH LABELLE
In thinking about that, you really need to have some sort of knowledge of what’s happening in climate change in the regions or areas where these projects are being executed. How do you stay on top of the trends in climate change? Therefore, what needs to be factored in for climate resilience?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
There’s a lot going on in this space. There’s reports coming out all the time, whether that be from people like the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change]. But also, guidance coming through studies from insurance bodies, new guidelines being developed by NGOs, government agencies as well. I’m a very curious person so I do always ask people what they’re seeing going on in their project, try to understand what climate change things they might be working on in their projects. That is very different depending on who you’re talking to and the type of projects they might work on, so that’s part of it.

I do try and stay up to date on certain journals and publications. I sit in some working groups as well, and working groups are fantastic places where people come and tell you what they’re reading and seeing, which is really helpful. I do find things like podcasts are really useful, and you can do that while you’re commuting to work as well, and trying to find that extra time to stay on top of the science. I would by no means call myself fully conversant in everything going on at any point in time. In Australia, there’s different policies in different states. So it is very hard to stay always on top of everything.

HANNAH LABELLE
So that’s really just part of that initial planning process for each project: to really get to know what the different concerns are in these specific areas. As well as the rules and regulations like you said, it changes a lot. And it can be also very specific, depending on which communities that you’re working in.

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
Yeah, that’s exactly it. And it’s part of the way we approach all our climate change engagements is we do an initial desktop assessment [to] make sure we have a good understanding of the policy and guidelines that are working around a particular asset. Because we do work broadly across lots of different asset types, and lots of different sectors. That often requires research and a knowledge finding exercise at the start of a project.

HANNAH LABELLE
I want to go back to the makeup of your team—you’re working with a city planner and even a former police officer. That makes me think about community engagement. Like you said, infrastructure involves a lot of areas of a community, both in terms of the assets themselves and the geographic area. So what does community engagement look like on these projects?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
Good climate resilience and resilience planning involves the community. On a project basis, people are scared of the communities. They can make issues, they can raise concerns, all of those sorts of things. So it is that line to tread between engagement with the community but also trying to work through that productively.

My team’s been doing work around drought resilience planning in New South Wales in Australia and really working directly with members of the community to start to understand what their impacts are, where their stressors are, and to start planning things out for them around services that can be provided, what’s already available, all of those things. Lots of focus groups, actually people going out to farms to talk to farmers and get an understanding. So very, very close, tactical, directly with the community, and specifically with members of the community, not just representative groups.

On infrastructure projects, we probably more deal with government agencies and local councils that represent communities. And from time to time, if there was a particular stakeholder as well, like we’re building a cycle path. We would want to engage with, say, the local cyclist community. So there might be some bodies there that exist to do that with. But again, it is difficult to try and engage fully with all the community and try to make sure we have the right input where we need it. And actually use that to inform our understanding of their vulnerability is most important, I think. It’s not necessarily always [that] the community is able to agree on the best way to resolve a potential climate change risk, but trying to find different ways to access communities and the right ones for the project [is] part of that as well.

HANNAH LABELLE
As we wrap up, let’s look ahead. What do you think is the next big thing in climate resilience in infrastructure projects?

BERNADETTE FITZGERALD
We’re doing stuff at an asset level, which is great—how do we build resilience of said project? The area that we need to do a lot of work on, and this is globally as well, is around actually building that understanding at a network level. We will start to see more work around resilience standards that sort of apply more broadly across a network of assets. And when I say network, that could be a road network, but it could also be a rail network, or it could also be those things together and how they all work together. I do think really starting to bring this out of asset and into more of a systemic understanding of climate resilience is part of that. And I think we’re going to start to see more activity around actually planning out like what the resilience standards need to be for climate change. So by that I mean what is an acceptable level of downtime that we’ll accept now? Because it’s not possible in all cases to make every asset impregnable to the weather that is part of climate change. So really starting to question what acceptable levels of service might look like, and frequency of road closures and that we might start to see a bit more engagement on those type of issues.

I also think we will start to understand how money moves around this as well. At the moment, we see climate change as a cost. What we don’t see is the impact of not doing anything. What is the cost of that? Again, as we start to think about these things getting closer and closer to us, we will actually have to say, “Well, what is the cost of this road being closed this often or this water plant failing? What is our cost associated with that?” And will that start to change some of the decisions that we’re making in projects around how we build a project? But because it’s not possible, I don’t think, to make everything fully climate resilient from a physical sense as well, we’re also going to see a lot more work around dealing with the outcomes of those. So, building resilience at a community scale and a human scale and regional scale. We can actually get up and running really quickly after [an] event. We can help people map into the right services and support that they need as well. I do think whilst we do start to see a growing understanding of where money might need to be spent or prioritized on certain types of projects, we will also see more awareness and communication around what we actually need to do in order to respond better when these events happen.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Project leaders on climate-resilient infrastructure initiatives need to be forward-thinking to ensure current and future projects are aligned to a common goal and to help teams adapt to shifting threats. In Lima, James Redman is the program director for the United Kingdom Delivery Team at construction firm Mace. Along with partners from engineering giant Arup and real estate and construction consultancy Gleeds, Redman’s team is working with the Peruvian government to deliver a mammoth infrastructure reconstruction program: There are 20 flood defense projects, nearly 90 projects to build or renovate schools and new health centers—and sprawling reforestation, afforestation, terracing and revegetation initiatives. Here’s our conversation.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT
James, I want to begin with the role of sustainability and resiliency as priorities in infrastructure projects, and the connection between them. In some regions of the world, including where you’re working, these are core components of every project, but in other areas, they might just now be gaining momentum. How have you seen climate resiliency grow as an area of focus?

JAMES REDMAN
In my experience—I’m going back maybe 15 years when I started my career—the buzzword was not resilience; it was sustainability. We focused maybe on the short-term sustainable goals more than the long-term. I think that’s now changed. I think we have a mature understanding of what we mean by sustainable development, and now we’re focusing more on the long-term goals, which really encapsulates the ideas behind resilience. We understand that to have resilience in our infrastructure projects, we need to have a resilient foundation before we can really claim the sustainable development. We are here to help the Peruvian government design and execute projects resiliently, and therefore help them to develop their infrastructure pipeline with a mindset of sustainable development.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Are those things always in alignment? On one level I suppose it’s technically possible to build something that is resilient—that resists extreme climate events—but that doesn’t necessarily involve sustainable practices. Yet on another more future-oriented level, they’re inextricably linked. So how do you keep those two ideas aligned on a project?

JAMES REDMAN
Resilience and sustainable development or sustainability has to go hand in hand, but we can look at the short-term and the long-term perspective on that. Resilience always really has a focus on the long term. We need to be resilient for the future. We need to make sure that we are designing our infrastructure with good asset durability in mind so that we are not having to rebuild, rework, in short time frames in the future. We have to make sure that we’re not rebuilding with false economy if we design and execute projects cheaply. But can we build a resilient project without the sustainability piece [of] that puzzle? Absolutely. We can design and execute infrastructure projects with very heavy carbon footprints and ultimately, we’re not achieving the holistic goal there. So we do have to focus on that short-term sustainable goal of building our infrastructure with low carbon footprints in the short term, but ultimately, maybe what’s more important is making sure that we design resiliently for the long term.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Speaking of holistic goals, let’s talk about the Peru reconstruction program. Tell me about this partnership that Mace is part of and how strong collaboration helps you execute a lot of projects.

JAMES REDMAN
Mace partnered with our JV partners, Arup and Gleeds, in June 2020. Collectively, we are the United Kingdom Delivery Team, and we’re working here on a government-to-government agreement with the Peruvian government. That is offering them PMO delivery and technical assurance support in the design and delivery of an infrastructure, education and healthcare portfolio worth in the region of 7.5 billion US dollars.

The reconstruction program is, it’s fair to say, a pioneering program in Peru. It brings central government spending underneath one roof. Through a PMO model, we can better monitor the design, the execution. We can deal with trends, with issues, more easily, and ultimately, we can realize benefits from the program in a much more suitable way that informs further construction and informs the independencies of all of these projects as we move forward.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Let’s dig in on that PMO aspect for a second because this program has now encompassed 137 projects, and the way that they dovetail, I assume, is essential to their overall value. Explain the combination of sort of individual interventions and coordination at the top.

JAMES REDMAN
The reconstruction program was set up in response to the El Niño event that struck Peru in 2017. So we’re seven years after that now, and it looks to close the infrastructure gap that the El Niño then brought about in school facilities, healthcare facilities and in water management assets. [The] fantastic thing about the program and the way that these three sectors have been brought together under one roof is that we can holistically design the solution. We can make sure that schools and hospitals are not situated on flood plains. We can make sure that the river defenses are defending the population centers and spaces of public and social value and, ultimately, make sure that we are getting the cheapest build possible, the most resilient build possible, for the money that we’re expending because we have that holistic view on the solution.

If I was to refer to the infrastructure sector again, we actually call it integrated solutions, and that means that we are looking at solutions up and down the river basin for the management of flood water and the protection of civil centers. Those components are river defenses in the lower basin, dams in the middle basin, and natural infrastructure solutions in the higher basin. By natural infrastructure solutions, I mean afforestation, reforestation, brown and gray infrastructure, to make sure that groundwater precipitation is being retained, soil stability is as good as it can be just to make sure that the water does not reach the civic centers in the volumes as it currently does.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Let’s dive into these water management projects. You worked on these early in the program. How are these projects improving climate resiliency in Lima? And what are some of the project management hurdles to overcome, given the number of collaborators in the program?

JAMES REDMAN
We have a combination of projects that involve dams in the middle basin, city drainage schemes that manage floodwater away from the population centers, and river flood defenses. The river flood defenses are fantastic examples of people-centric infrastructure, where we try and include social areas for the local communities, as well as the infrastructure just being there for a functional purpose. But these different components need to be interoperable. They need to speak to each other. We can’t have cumecs and cumecs of water flooding out of a city while a river is running high without considering the global impact. So the coordination needed between these designs is intense, and we have to deal with this right back in the early stages of project planning. The United Kingdom Delivery Team has brought the RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architects’, project stages out to Peru, and we receive the projects from the investment system at quite an immature point, which gives us a massive advantage. It allows us to design how these projects are going to speak to each other, how they’re going to be coordinated, and ultimately how the designs holistically manage the water in the river basin.

We procure, design and build. We make sure that the coordination between the relevant design teams is tight and is fluid, and we upskill the client. We make sure that the client has a view on these interfaces that exist within every river basin. Ultimately, the client is responsible for making sure that that coordination is robust and does the job that the program benefits demand of us. But the contractors play a huge part in this as well. They understand that they are there as part of an integrated solution, and they work very closely with other design teams to make sure that what they are designing fits into the bigger picture.

So from a project management point of view, I would say it’s all about early planning. It’s all about making sure that the projects are set up for success, in terms of the stakeholder engagement and the coordination with third parties. That is so important to detail in scope of work documents, terms of reference documents, so that the contractor can enter into the opportunity eyes wide open to the challenges that they will have and the sense of collaboration that they will need to bring to that project to make it a success.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
How is the delivery team futureproofing the program and ensuring these reconstruction projects have a long-lasting impact in Lima?

JAMES REDMAN
In terms of resilient design and sustainable development, the one thing that we want to make sure we achieve on the reconstruction program is a lasting legacy. We need to make sure—indeed part of our scope is to make sure—that the Peruvian government develops the skills and the long-term knowledge for implementing infrastructure like this in the future. We have a comprehensive knowledge transfer program, which sits alongside our delivery program, and we’re making sure that we are passing that knowledge and that international best practice across to the client, and we’re doing it in a way that will last. We’re making sure that they as an institution retain the training materials and that they then actually take over that program themselves. They can then take that knowledge for themselves. And for me, that speaks massively to resilience and sustainable development—making sure that you are leaving a client in place who can replicate this success for the future is huge for the country, and it’s already born fantastic results.

They’ve bought into the benefits that the program delivers. They’ve bought into the interdependencies between different typologies of infrastructure: schools, hospitals, flood defense. They’ve bought into the need to take stakeholders on that journey with us, to make sure that we have social buy-in to the projects. And maybe on a slightly more short-term point, they understand that communicating the benefits and securing that wider society-based support for this infrastructure is critical. If the country and if the communities are being briefed on the long-term benefits, we will achieve better, wider results.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
Let’s wrap up by taking a step back. What’s a perspective or lesson learned you’d like to share with others who want to lead successful climate-resilient infrastructure projects?

JAMES REDMAN
In my relatively short career, I think one of the things I’ve learned is that when a project or a program starts up, when it mobilizes, it’s rush, rush, rush. The client will immediately have short-term goals, in terms of what the project or the program needs to achieve in the first six months, the first year, and that diverts global attention away from what the program will achieve in the future.

And I think program leaders need to lead the conversation off into the future much, much earlier. We need to start that benefit realization conversation going very early doors. We need to structure the whole program around achieving those long-term objectives, but as I said, all too often it’s very front-loaded. We don’t give ourself the breathing space, and we often cast our sights to the future too late on. As a program director here in Peru, we have always tried to focus on the benefits that the program is bringing, in parallel with the comments and the activities that drive the here and now.

STEVE HENDERSHOT
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