Sustainability is a priority for today’s climate-conscious consumers. Data collected by Yale suggests that 73% of Americans believe that climate change is happening and 69% say that corporations should do more to stop the rising risk of global warming.

The construction industry is particularly well-positioned to embrace sustainability by shifting to eco-friendly business process management (BPM) policies. Sustainable BPM can help you make micro-adjustments to your operations that, over time, significantly reduce your carbon footprint and minimize waste.

Sustainable Process Management

Running an eco-conscious construction company can give you a competitive edge. Customers who are looking to reduce their environmental impact may find your business more attractive than ones that rely on traditional construction methods.

Green BPM helps you prioritize sustainability by helping you identify metrics to measure progress. You can use SMART goals can help you work towards a more eco-friendly BPM by helping you create motivating objectives that are:

• Specific;
• Measurable;
• Attainable;
• Relevant;
• Time-bound.

These principles can be powerful if you need to convince stakeholders that sustainability is important to your firm. By setting goals that are measurable and time-bound, you can motivate your team to follow through on initiatives to reduce waste and cut down on carbon use. For example, if you work in commercial construction, you might set a goal like “reduce glass-related waste by 25% in the next year”.

Sustainable BPM can help you stay ahead of compliance laws and regulatory changes, too. This can be a real boon if you work in a state with ambitious climate regulations. Instilling an ethos of sustainable BPM may even help you become eligible for green tax incentives and grants. By qualifying for incentives, you can account for these costs and continue to invest in innovative materials.

Eco-Friendly Materials

Construction is notorious for creating a third of the world’s total waste and also consumes 100 billion tonnes of raw material every year. Fortunately, developers are finding new ways to replace wasteful materials with more sustainable alternatives.

Researching sustainable alternatives is particularly important if you plan on using concrete in upcoming projects. Concrete is carbon-intensive and unsustainable, as it designed to degrade over time and releases a large amount of CO2 while being created. Fortunately, there are plenty of eco-friendly concrete alternatives available today, including:

• Green Concrete: A blanket term for concrete that has at least one component sourced from a recycled waste material.
• Ashcrete: Ashcrete is created using a by-product of combustion coal and has significantly lower costs than traditional concrete.
• Cross Laminated Timber (CLT): CLT can be used in prefabricated structural applications. It doesn’t rot or mold, either, meaning it can be used on long-term builds.
• Mycelium: Mushroom-based mycelium can be dried and processed to become a strong building material. It’s still in development as a long-term building material but could become an eco-friendly option in the coming years.

These materials are less carbon-intensive, easy to work with, and are cheaper and more durable than concrete. These materials can put you ahead of competitors and improve your reputation as a carbon-conscious, low-waste construction company.

Resource Management

You’ll still need to take a proactive approach to resource management if you want to brand yourself as a sustainable company in the construction industry.

One way to do so is through effective project management, which can reduce waste and improve resource utilization by addressing scheduling conflicts, minimizing the risk of overrun, and forecasting potential risks. Proactive project management can also help keep your costs down. You can also use this technique to help you keep track of materials that can be salvaged for recycling as well.

Tracking and reducing your on-site resources should be the backbone of your efforts when trying to implement sustainable BPM. However, you can further reduce waste by utilizing green-cloud tech, which can help you minimize your carbon footprint while reducing electricity use and freeing up office space for other projects.

Conclusion

Adopting sustainable BPM can help you run a low-waste ecologically friendly construction firm. This approach can improve your efficiency, decrease your waste, and reduce your costs, too.