1 Overview
Alison Davies
Associate Director, corporate responsibility
With 5,000 people globally, we recognise our increasing scale and influence to make a positive impact on society. Not only is helping to solve society’s greatest challenges the right thing to do, it also represents an immense business opportunity.
To deliver on our commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we have prioritised four areas where we can have the greatest impact: quality education; gender equality; sustainable cities and communities; and industry, innovation and infrastructure.
Through strategic partnerships, we are improving access to education and increasing employability skills for disadvantaged children and young people. To enable greater gender equality in our industry and communities, we are setting up programmes to attract more women to construction, nurture talent and enable greater progression to senior roles. We have an immense opportunity to help our clients to build sustainable cities and communities. By enabling ever-closer collaboration with our clients, industry partners and the supply chain, we will drive higher standards and put a long-term multi-stakeholder view at the heart of projects and programmes.
2 Highlights
community volunteer hours
of our people feel comfortable bringing their whole self to work
of our people in industry leadership positions
reduction in carbon emissions per employee
education fund grants
offices certified to ISO 14001 Environmental Management System
3 Quality education
Nearly one-fifth of the global school-age population are missing out on a quality education. As well as recognising the great challenge this presents to society, we also anticipate how this will contribute to a growing skills gap in our industry. As a result, we have built a holistic education and employability programme that seeks to remove barriers to opportunity, raise aspirations and unlock talent at every step of the education journey.
4 Gender equality
We welcome the increasing transparency on gender representation in business. While we are going in the right direction, we must attract and promote more women to be truly representative of society and enable true equality. We know that becoming increasingly diverse and inclusive will also bring immense business value and opportunity. To address this we have set up programmes on inclusive leadership, flexible working, mentoring and returnship.
5 Sustainable cities and communities
Given society is exceeding planetary boundaries and socio-economic inequalities are rising, we have an important role to play in helping our clients to build more sustainable cities and communities. We are working with design teams to deliver sustainable solutions throughout project lifecycles, while also improving our direct energy and resource use. Through advisory, procurement, project management and building information modelling, we will provide our clients with systems that generate ongoing value from sustainability, for their business and society.
6 Industry, innovation and infrastructure
Investment in infrastructure and innovation are crucial in driving economic growth and development. With over half the world’s population now living in cities, mass transport and renewable energy are becoming ever more important. Historically, the construction industry has been behind others in embracing new technology and adopting methods to improve. Being a part of delivering the world’s largest construction projects, we play a leading role in driving efficiency and exploration of technological innovation.
7 Our performance
Progress on our corporate responsibility pillars
We report on our progress against performance measures for our four corporate responsibility pillars of great place to work, integrity in industry, environmental stewardship and community value.
Progress on the United Nations Global Compact
We are committed to the United Nations Global Compact ten principles across human rights, labour rights, environment and anti-corruption. View our Communication on Progress 2017–2018 to read more about our progress on the ten principles and contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.