Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. How can we develop prosperity, without compromising the life of future generations? Companies are integrating ideas of sustainability in their marketing, corporate communications, annual reports and in their actions. Projects as instrument of change are crucial to sustainable development. Association for Project Management (past-) chairman Tom Taylor recognizes that “Project and Program Managers are significantly placed to make contributions to Sustainable Management practices”. And at the 2008 IPMA World Congress, Vice-President Mary McKinlay stated “the further development of the project management profession requires project managers to take responsibility for sustainability”. It is for that reason inevitable that „sustainability‟ will find its way to project management methodologies and practices in the very near future. But how is this responsibility put to practice? This paper explores the concept of sustainability and its application to project management. Based on the studies on the application of these principles in project management we will build the argument that the project management profession should take responsibility for not just for the process of delivering a project, but also for the content and the results of the project itself. Including the sustainability aspects of that result.
In order to guarantee structural integrity of marine structures in an effective way, operators of these structures seek an affordable, simple and robust system for monitoring detected cracks. Such systems are not yet available and the authors took a challenge to research a possibility of developing such a system. The paper describes the initial research steps made. In the first place, this includes reviewing conventional and recent methods for sensing and monitoring fatigue cracks and discussing their applicability for marine structures. A special attention is given to the promising but still developing new sensing techniques. In the second place, wireless network systems are reviewed because they form an attractive component of the desired system. The authors conclude that it is feasible to develop the monitoring system for detected cracks in marine structures and elaborate on implications of availability of such a system on risk based inspections and structural health monitoring systems
It is becoming clear that the project management practice must embrace sustainability in order to develop into a 'true profession' (Silvius et al., 2012). In project management, sustainability can be gained in both the product of the project and in the process of delivering the product. (Gareis et al., 2010) Nine sustainability principles have been identified that should be implemented in the project management practice. These nine principles are: (1) values and ethics; (2) holistic approach; (3) long term view; (4) large scale; (5) risk reduction; (6) participation; (7) accountability; (8) transparency; (9) stakeholder interest. In a case study it is researched which project and program management roles can exert an influence to have the sustainability principles implemented in the project management practice and how they can accomplish this implementation.
