Corporate Sustainability
Our Sustainability Commitment, We’re in This Together
At HDR, the promise of doing things right to make great things possible is at the heart of our sustainability commitment. We have dedicated ourselves to transparency in our goals, practices, and policies surrounding sustainability, carbon reduction, employee diversity, inclusion and equity, health and safety, and how we engage in the communities where we live and work. As a 100% employee-owned company, our daily interactions reinforce these efforts in more than 200 offices worldwide.
Our work in sustainability took several leaps forward with the addition of a full-time corporate sustainability director, employee advisory committee, and an enhanced ESG report that focuses on HDR’s impact on the economy, environment and people throughout the world.
— Eric Keen, Chairman & CEO
Making an Impact
Our sustainability program continues pushing boundaries by reducing our impacts, acting as change agents and providing value to our clients through sustainable solutions.
With every action, we ask the same question: what’s our impact on the world?
From designing a road that improves mobility to a hospital that heals, we take to heart our role in making the world a better, smarter, safer place. We think globally and act locally to improve the places where we live and work.
It begins by working together, with our clients and communities, ending each time with collaborations that add meaning and value. We know every small action yields great results. We take responsibility through:
Community Involvement & Support
Both as individuals and as a company, we take pride in supporting efforts to better our communities — not just financially, but also with our time. Whether it’s providing basic needs, beautifying a public place or leading enriching activities, we are passionate about being engaged.
Many of our team members also volunteer with aid organisations such as Bridges to Prosperity and Engineers without Borders, giving their time and sharing their professional talents to provide communities around the world access to healthcare, clean water and modern energy grids. And through Design 4 Others, more than 200 of our employees have provided architecture, engineering and planning services to communities in need. Recent projects have included a new school in Kenya to expand capacity and increase the number of students who have access to education and a new outpatient clinic in rural Malawi that provides community-based care to more than 20,000 residents.
In addition, in 2012 we created the HDR Foundation. Fueled by donations from our employees, the Foundation provides support to nonprofit organizations in the communities in which we live and work. Since its inception, the Foundation has awarded over $7 million in grants.
Health & Safety
We want our employees to bring their best self to work, which is why we work hard to make wellness a significant part of our culture. Our full-time wellness manager, along with over 130 volunteer employee wellness coordinators dedicate their time to promoting healthy lifestyles through multidimensional wellness initiatives. From health education, to tobacco cessation programs and financial wellness, the goal is to improve the quality of life for our employees and their families.
And while we want our employees to come to work happy and healthy, we also strive to make sure they go home safely — every day. We foster a culture of safe behaviour to ensure a safe work environment both in the office and on our project sites. Careful planning, comprehensive training, continual observation and feedback, root cause analyses and consistent management support are the cornerstones of our philosophy that “good enough” is never good enough when it comes to safety.
Sustainable Business Practices
We are committed to reducing our environmental impact through the use of sustainable business practices. We continually examine our day-to-day activities to determine where we can make business improvements that deliver long-term sustainable value. We set measurable goals and assess the results to see how we should move forward.
In 2011, HDR established a goal to reduce GHG emissions by 20% by 2020, adjusted for growth, from a 2011 baseline. Although COVID-19 resulted in reduced emissions, HDR emissions were trending in the right direction, as shown in an overall reduction of 19% from 2011 baseline by 2019. In 2021, we calculated our final emissions inventory in working toward our target, which showed we met our goal with a 53% emissions reduction from 2011-2020.
We are continually working to increase our emissions reductions through targeted investments in our offices and improved business practices, as well as educational and awareness initiatives. We continue to update our processes so we can better understand and identify the greatest sources of GHG emissions within our organization, establish a data-driven approach to developing reduction strategies, and track progress in reducing emissions and towards meeting other sustainability goals, such as energy and cost savings. We are currently establishing a new emissions reduction target and outlining steps to reach that goal.
View some of our other success in our Sustainable Business Practices infographic.
