Future Ready

Rethink climate, resilience, and sustainability for your organization

In Future Ready: Your Organization’s Guide to Rethinking Climate, Resilience, and Sustainability, a team of business leaders with deep expertise in engineering, planning, finance, project, program implementation and advisory consulting perspective delivers an essential guide for executives, managers, and other business and infrastructure organization leaders to set and implement a resilience, sustainability and ESG strategy in complex project and operating environments. Through practical examples and proven insights, readers will learn to proactively engage with stakeholders, successfully plan, implement, and measure the impacts of their initiatives, and effectively communicate the results.

In the book, the authors draw on hundreds of completed projects across a full range of client organizations, markets, sectors, and scales to equip readers with unprecedented insights and the behind-the-scenes work that went into making the projects successful. The authors also include:

• Strategies for identifying, cataloguing, and reporting risks—from the operational to the physical and transactional—as well as explanations of how climate risk scenarios can reveal hidden opportunities and unexpected vulnerabilities
• A Future Ready mindset and the specific examples of organizational sustainability and climate adaptation commitments and the paths companies have taken to meet their goals
• Critical questions that leaders must ask of themselves and their organizations before they begin a climate, resilience, and/or sustainability initiative

A must-read guide for executives, board members, ESG professionals, and other business and infrastructure organization leaders, Future Ready belongs in the hands of anyone who finds themselves responsible for helping an organization achieve their environmental, social, and governance goals.

Foreword xiii

Introduction: Superstorm Sandy 1

Chapter 1: Rethink Everything 7

Part I: Touring a Dynamic World 31

Chapter 2: On the Street 33

Chapter 3: On the Move 65

Chapter 4: Below the Surface 105

Chapter 5: In the Big Apple 129

Part II: How to Design and Implement Your Organization’s Sustainability Journey 153

Chapter 6: Define, Measure, and Set Targets 157

Chapter 7: Tools and Technologies 171

Chapter 8: Reporting Risk and Assessing Vulnerability 183

Chapter 9: Building Support Inside and Out 203

Chapter 10: Nature- Based Solutions from Coast to Coast 213

Conclusion: The Right Future, the Right Way 233

Epilogue: When You Rethink Everything, Finance Will Flow 239

Afterword: Ready, Steady, Breath…Go! 249

Afterword: Why There’s No I in Team—or CRS 251

Acknowledgments 255

About the Authors 259

Glossary 261

Index 269

TOM LEWIS, international consultant and business leader, advises global organizations promoting sustainable and resilient infrastructure and technologies, environmental and climate stewardship, and disaster preparedness and recovery.

ALASTAIR (ALY) MACGREGOR’s industry-leading career in high- performance design has ranged from individual net zero buildings to strategic portfolio decarbonization, and spans four continents.

With the increasing frequency of weather events and disasters like hurricanes and droughts, the urgency of addressing climate change is becoming apparent to many of us in an immediate, here-and-now kind of way. The business community has a responsibility to work toward the large shifts and broad-based actions that, research tells us, are our best bet at avoiding climate-related devastation. Thankfully, people are beginning to step up to the plate in an unprecedented way, and new projects and concepts are revolutionizing the way we think about sustainability—not to mention accelerating our journey toward a more planet-friendly future. Within this context, all of us have the opportunity to rethink our sustainability strategy and follow in the footsteps of climate leaders.

In Future Ready, readers are introduced to the basics of climate science, as well as the latest trends and findings, so they can build a deep understanding of the issues facing humanity today. Then, the authors provide a refreshingly practical approach to the organizational strategy of sustainability and climate change resilience. This book covers concrete risks and opportunities related to climate change, and it also offers useful strategies—along with specific examples of their implementation—that leaders can use to operationalize a commitment to sustainability and ensure future success.

Readers can start implementing the ideas in this book today, as they begin to define goals and targets that make sense for their unique organizations. Illuminating the process of designing, implementing, and iterating a sustainability strategy that delivers real results, Future Ready will inspire leaders everywhere to confront climate change in earnest.

PRAISE FOR FUTURE READY

“Collaboration is key to the global transformation we need to address the climate crisis. Business and infrastructure leaders must be at the center of this cause, working together across sectors. Future Ready provides powerful tools and real-world examples for companies as they work to achieve environmental, social, and governance goals and make a lasting impact in their networks.”
—Seth Schultz, CEO, Resilience Rising

Let’s commit to making real changes and shifting the needle toward sustainability

Why has it taken people so long to begin addressing climate change? How can we, as business leaders, avoid false steps, counterproductive incentives, and ineffective projects? Future Ready answers all these questions and many more.

Whether you’re just starting out on the sustainability journey, looking to build institutional support, or working to accelerate climate action, Future Ready will serve as an essential guide to setting strategy, driving implementation, engaging stakeholders, measuring impact, and communicating the results.

Contributors

Foreword by Professor Spiro N. Pollalis, Harvard Design School and Anthony Kane, Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure

Epilogue by Stacy Swann, CEO and Founding Partner of Climate Finance Advisors, a Member of WSP