Background

An ATM Service Provider (ATMSP) requested an independent and holistic review of its environmental sustainability activities and its roadmap to net zero.

Challenge

Following an ISO14001 audit of the ATMSP, several areas were highlighted for improvement, and Ebeni was contracted to conduct an environmental sustainability gap analysis, which specifically considered the following aspects:

• Planning for net zero, containing a stretch target; including a proposed approach to monitoring and reducing indirect (Scope 2 and 3) and direct (Scope 1) carbon emissions;
• Monitoring and addressing “beyond climate” environmental impacts such as waste materials, water, biodiversity, and air quality;
• Recommendations for embedding sustainability drivers into the day- to-day business practice, with a coherent link to business continuity planning (for example, in consideration of compliance with both ISO14001 requirements and potential Government tender criteria) and organisational culture.

Our solution

Ebeni conducted a series of interviews with the ATMSP stakeholders, who represented many departments and levels throughout the organisation. This, teamed with a comprehensive desktop review, allowed for a thorough assessment of the effectiveness of their current environmental sustainability activities.

A summary of selected industry best practice most relevant to their environmental sustainability needs was reviewed and presented to senior management, with consideration of applicable legislation and related requirements. There was a particular focus on sustainability best practice in the safety-critical aviation industry, drawing on Ebeni’s first-hand experience with sustainability strategies and carbon inventory methodologies for airports and Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), as well as broader cross-industry standards and guidance.

Ebeni were able to propose a consolidated list of 13 improvement recommendations. For each improvement recommendation, where possible, an indication was provided of the relative level of benefit, cost, effort/resources, and associated likely duration for implementation. We also highlighted key internal/external dependencies and the potential timescale implications/options.

Study outcomes

The study identified several recommendations (or in some cases actions from within a recommendation) that were considered a “Quick Win” i.e. an action/ activity that can be conducted quickly to make a positive difference. All were necessarily concise in nature, with fairly low cost/resource impacts. For example;

Start to regularly identify and track business risks related to environmental sustainability in the central Business Risk Register, to ensure that their potential impacts are being appropriately identified, assessed, reported and mitigated.

and;

Create an Environmental Skills Community (or Forum) for employees with relevant enthusiasm or knowledge to collaborate.

Several other recommendations (or in some cases actions from within a recommendation) were not considered Quick Wins because they were not expected to deliver significant benefit in the short term, but good reason still existed for them to be considered urgent. This may have been because the opportunity to perform them was time-bound (e.g. in the case of the ERP upgrade), and/or because they constituted significant enablers for other beneficial activities.

Finally, we presented a high-level “environmental sustainability roadmap” (overview presented below), outlining a recommended approach to improving overall environmental sustainability within the organisation. The roadmap outlines the recommended approach to environmental sustainability planning and includes a continuous improvement governance structure for developing, prioritising, and delivering the roadmap. It consists of a proposed timeline with all activities necessary to address the recommendations arising from the gap analysis. This indicative timeline is intended to help the ATMSP visualise and discuss “the art of the possible” for immediate and ongoing environmental sustainability development.

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