Expert insight: Why collaboration is key to delivering sustainable and resilient infrastructure
)
Dr Mary Lou Lauria
Vice President, Environment & Water - Americas at Worley Consulting
2024 Panelist on Delivering Resilient & Sustainable Infrastructure
Dr. Mary Lou Lauria is an environmental consultant with 30 years’ post graduate experience - 25 of those years have been working around the world with Worley. Dr. Lauria provides strategic advice to clients across North America and globally in support of their sustainability planning, enablement of development, community planning and regulatory advocacy. Dr. Lauria has built and led teams across the globe to collaborate and deliver successful environmental outcomes for industrial developments. She is embedded in the Worley global network and has learned and shared lessons from around the world.
Dr. Lauria has extensive experience in structuring and managing large environmental and social teams for industrial sectors in offshore, onshore, and remote locations. She has managed resource forecasts, established budgets, tracked progress and built teams. Currently Dr. Lauria operates a business of over $100m, with 500 professional consultants across Canada and the United States providing services across permitting, approvals, social engagement, sciences (biology, chemistry), liability management, decommissioning and restoration, geosciences, and a full water offering. In addition, through our Environmental Consulting business in Canada we have three limited partnership businesses with Indigenous groups which closely aligns with our Worley Reconciliation journey with Indigenous peoples.
Dr. Lauria was elected as Chair of the Board of Directors for Marine Renewables Canada in January 2024. Marine Renewables Canada is a leader in providing marine renewable energy solutions to a world market. Dr. Lauria has a degree in Marine Biology with Business from the University of London, and her Ph.D was focused on biophysical interactions in estuarine systems at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton UK. She is passionate about the changing definition of success, the importance of diversity of thought and advocates for industrial projects to be developed with a positive impact to community, biodiversity and water.
Environment Analyst presents expert insights from Dr Mary Lou Lauria, the Americas regional environment & water vice president at Worley Consulting.
EA: What are the critical steps to ensure that sustainability metrics are prioritized from the outset and across the asset’s full lifecycle – and to help close 'the gap' between environmental & social objectives and engineering design teams?
MLL: Collaboration and partnership are key. Environmental professionals working with engineering design teams should be focused on understanding the customer’s sustainability culture, the regulatory trajectory and confirm that this is embedded in design. A true sustainability-in-design approach. These key objectives need to be embedded early to achieve the best outcomes in terms of cost, ease of implementation, society benefits and project delivery integration. It becomes the new way of delivering projects.
Sustainability objectives assessment in the early project stages is aimed at clarifying the context for sustainability on a project and identifying priority/material sustainability risks and opportunities. This continues to form the basis of a sustainability framework to embed sustainability considerations across all disciplines during future phases of development.
During pre-feasibility and feasibility studies it is important to conduct a sustainability objectives review to identify key issues that could affect internal policy and external regulatory compliance, that in turn could affect project development – in terms of external standards, lenders or government funders (in the US for example the Department of Energy, Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), energy transition grant programs). Community benefits (workforce development, investment in local community infrastructure), and environmental justice considerations are now critical in early planning.
EA: How is the growing application of the Envision sustainability framework and rise of social equity and environmental justice considerations changing the approach to infrastructure development?
MLL: Social equity and environmental justice are embedded in the understanding of broadening the value of project delivery, and frameworks such as Envision are key to shifting the mindset of sustainable and resilient infrastructure. The framework provides the guidance to initiate systemic change in the planning, design and delivery and is a tool for proponents, communities, designers, contractors to be able to collaborate around a common objective and embed sustainability into delivery. Collectively the industry can initiate substantial change and positive impact by aligning to standard frameworks which are focused on sustainable delivery.
EA: Can you provide some examples of innovative approaches to increase climate mitigation and embed resilience into infrastructure assets utilizing nature-based solutions?
MLL: Climate is at the forefront of all our minds for resilience planning for new and existing infrastructure and the understanding that we need to work with nature to provide long-lasting solutions. At Worley, we have proudly been applying nature-based approaches to create climate resilience for infrastructure assets around the globe. As an example, in North America, we are planning and designing foreshore ecological restoration to provide long term resiliency for coastal infrastructure and working with Indigenous communities to embed traditional knowledge into new designs.
EA: How can we utilize climate vulnerability assessments to help manage project risk and facilitate investment – and how is the approach evolving given the sharpening of climate-induced stresses we are seeing more and more of?
MLL: We only need to look at the change over the last few years of wildfire and flooding to understand clearly the imminent threats we are facing from climate. Climate vulnerability assessments are key to identifying and managing asset risk, and are becoming critical in capital investment planning and funding. New assessment tools continue to evolve to align with changing climate realities. Not only are they critical for the planning around assets – they are fundamental to the planning, management and welfare of communities and the safety of people.