André-Martin Bouchard, Global Director Earth & Environment - Global Executive Director ESG at WSP shares his perspective on how consultancies are evolving their service offering.

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Throughout my career as an environmental and sustainability leader, my goal has been to assemble the broadest possible multidisciplinary teams. This has been driven by the understanding that by bringing together diverse teams of experts, with complementary skillsets, you maximise the opportunities to create better outcomes for a wider range of stakeholders in any given project.

Growth of our core offering

Thirty years ago when I was starting out, a multidisciplinary offering encapsulated longstanding specialisms in remediation, air quality, surface and groundwater, biology and ecology. Over time it became apparent that projects across a range of client sectors increasingly required broader expertise in earth sciences and geoengineering. This was evident, for example, in mine tailings and dams in the mining sector, or tunnelling and ground works for major infrastructure projects. In response environmental consulting providers started adding these to their portfolios.

With the strengthening of the sustainability agenda since the millennium, the breadth of E&S knowledge required by our clients and other stakeholders has grown further still; in fact, it is evolving as fast as our clients and communities are evolving driven by multiple global megatrends. We have moved beyond simply providing consulting services, to strategically partnering our clients, across the built and natural environments, as they themselves navigate fast-changing contexts.

Today, in addition to those core specialisms, any E&S firm looking to provide a ‘total’ service must also have within its ranks, economists, climate scientists, statisticians, archaeologists, anthropologists, experts in social value, GHG emissions, stakeholder engagement… the list goes on. And of course, the astonishing advances in technology, bringing for example unprecedented operational insights and predictive modelling ability, mean that we must be expert this area too because digitalisation and sustainability are inherently linked.

Asserting our expertise to take a leading role

Having overseen the growth of our collective service offering to such a diverse spread of capabilities, it’s now incumbent on our industry to claim a science-based leadership role in society. Now more than ever we must step up to set the agenda and steer the global conversation with our clients right up to the C-suite, with policy makers and other invested parties across our communities.

This is even more important when we consider how the boundaries between different consulting sectors have become increasingly indistinct. Other professional service sectors, not least management consultancy and technology sectors, are increasingly targeting areas which have traditionally been the sole preserve of E&S consultants. And while they do undoubtedly have specific competencies which could overlap, for example around data auditing or SaaS solutions, they lack the operational, hands-on science-based experience that we have built up over the past half century and more.

Only our industry can comprehensively and authoritatively move from the field to the boardroom, providing the full spectrum of E&S oversight for our clients. Indeed, some clients may not know what they want or even what is possible. It is our responsibility to guide them, helping to raise their ambitions even higher.

Nevertheless, while our technical knowhow spans the full project lifecycle, from design to implementation to operation and closure and restoration, taking into account multiple and diverse stakeholders, we must remain alert to our own individual weaknesses. This self-awareness will ensure that we remain willing to partner and to collaborate as an industry. It will also drive the ongoing evaluation of our skills as we continue to craft the most comprehensive multidisciplinary offerings possible, ensuring the best possible support to our clients and positioning our industry for the decades to come.

This is the time when we must assert our unique proposition and take our strategic consulting and advisory role to the next level. There is no reason why our industry should not become the wider societal catalyst for the enormous tasks ahead as we put in place the foundations for a more sustainable and equitable future.