Four engineering students were invited to speak at IPWEA’s Sustainability in Public Works Conference earlier this week about their views on sustainability in the public works industry.

There were some key themes running through the discussions; the speakers wanted to see sustainability integrated into every stage of decision making rather than being an afterthought, and they called on universities to rethink how they approach sustainability in the engineering curriculum, again making it a central theme rather than a tangential element.

Elia Hauge, a civil engineering student from UNSW who is also undertaking industrial training at Sydney Water, questioned why sustainability hasn’t been approached in the same way as other industry practices.

“Consider the push that we’re seeing at the moment toward customer-centric workplaces, or the leaps and bounds that we’re making toward safety,” she said.

“Why not apply a similar culture shift to the environment as well? It’s not just up to our public works departments to instigate this culture of sustainability. A critical phase of this solution will occur in the classroom; universities are making really great progress in offering students elective studies in sustainability, but the impacts of resource depletion, climate change, and social inequality are not going to be solved by a select few. This is a collective challenge, and it requires a collective solution.

“Sustainable thinking is yet to be integrated into our learning in the same way that finance and economics have been emphasised.
 
“While sustainability is still seen as an add-on to our everyday business. Achieving this is going to remain a colossal challenge; we need to integrate sustainable practice into our routine programs.”

Her thoughts were echoed by UTS student Scott McKeon.

“Once we do get to that culture shift, where everybody understands sustainability and what it is, that it comes back to a normalisation and standardisation of sustainability, it should be standard practice," he said. 

“The experience I’ve had on construction sites is that everyone is in charge of safety. That’s something I would really like to see move forward a lot more into sustainability. Everyone in the workplace needs to be thinking about it, and I think a big step to get there is actually education. Throughout my degree, I haven’t learnt that much within my course about sustainability, it’s not really integrated as fundamental.

“What can we do to push forward sustainability? Continue to push the contractors from commercial procurement, construction and other projects, all the way to the culture shift of consumer buying.”

Changing heartsets

Fellow UTS student Sloan Trad said that with such a strong emphasis on the technical, engineering degrees were leaving very little room for students to learn about sustainability.

“I remember wanting to change the world going into engineering, and then being disappointed that I was educated to emphasise and concentrate solely on technical problems,” he said.

“Engineers are the product of universities where engineering curricular which are overcrowded with technical details. Most accredited Australian curricular do not reflect sustainability in a major way.

“It does not lead to perceiving sustainability as a lens that we need to use in every decision that we make as engineers. Universities should move from shifting mindsets to shifting ‘heartsets’, a key concept that is essential to tackling complex problems.”

Alexandra Devlin from UTS issued a final challenge to delegates:

“We are at a critical stage and can no longer be complacent. We have to make bold changes and make bold commitments to sustainability. We have to make sustainability core to all businesses and all public infrastructure. We hope to make sustainability standard; it is not an option, it is core to everyday practice," she said.