ISCA New Zealand Summit Preview: Q&A With Arup
Arup are platinum partners for the Infrastructure Sustainability Summit in New Zealand. We spoke with the Arup NZ team about their sustainability drive, and why they chose to partner with ISCA.
Q) Why did you decide to partner with ISCA for the Infrastructure Sustainability Summit?
A) Bringing together infrastructure sustainability people from across project phases provides momentum and energy to explore the trends and advancements towards sustainable development. Attending a summit provides the opportunity to catch up with like-minded industry peers to build a network of support for people working across change in sustainability.
Q) >What are some of the other ways Arup is demonstrating sustainability leadership?
A) At Arup, we apply our people-centred values and our capability in designing the built environment to contribute to advancing the targets set out by the UNSDGs. We do this through both our specific global Community Engagement work, as well as integrated into our projects.
Q) What does the industry in New Zealand need to do to realise the SDGs by 2030?
A) Infrastructure practitioners should be honest about where there are knowledge gaps, and strive for partnerships to understand how targets can be met. For example, the waste challenge provides an area where we could think about how ‘waste’ could become a viable material for the built environment. The Circular Economy is driving our thinking in this area as well.
Q) Arup has done some impressive work on climate change resilience what does this mean for our New Zealand infrastructure industry? And the global community?
A) The City Resilience Index, developed with the Rockefeller Foundation, provides a framework for city leaders to identify where they need to strengthen their resilience approach, and target funds for where they are most needed. The strength in the index is its capacity to measure and provide evidence in an accessible way to inform the way we invest and plan cities.
Q) How are you currently deploying the IS tool on your projects and what have been the challenges. Learnings and successes?
A real benefit of the rating tool is that it helps to start the discussion about goals that we want to achieve on projects, and the plans that we need to follow to in order to achieve those results. The challenge is ensuring that sustainability makes its way onto the agenda early in project planning, and that the expectations are carried along the project cycle.