A few years ago we asked Estonian Professor Kalle Komissaarov to describe our sustainability concept to support our planning process in one project. At that time we were doing something sufficiently new and positive that we had to involve a professor in order to build credibility at the local government level, which had difficulty in believing that a developer could come with such plans. The professor wrote a document in the local language describing the latest trends in the world and why our approach is leading (and perhaps in 10 years, will be done by more developers), in order to create a versatile and suitable planning in any area. Below key elements from his analysis are included. This gives one vision of some of the thought behind the Oxford 360 Sustainability Index and our application of PMI.

"Economy and the society are changing so quickly which results in an opinion that in the long term strategic planning needs to be exchanged for  tactical planning (which is this sustainable planning). Strategic planning is a linear movement which will be put in place and then moved until the glorious end where the goals are achieved. But on the way  there they don't consider environment and all the changes are treated as threats. So for this type of approach there is an opposite approach called tactical planning. This term has been borrowed  from military terminology which in his first meaning represents tactical training.  There the solder has to take decisions during the whole training and act accordingly. Tactical planning is an open dynamic system. It starts with vision or strategy but during the process it is open to  changes so the end result can be very much different from the initial vision. Tactical planning does require involvement of bigger amount of people and information but as a reward it scatters and diminishes risks." wrote Kalle Komissarov.

There are three initial criteria how to judge if development is sustainable or not:

1. Planning has to be holistic. This can be obtained if you imagine a diagram, built of circles like a Venn diagram, which shows all the Oxford 360 degree Sustainability criteria overlapping (economic, social, investment, ecological, government policy, local residents' opinion, transport, energy, global effects, inter alia). The optimum planning is at the overlap of all the circles.

Holistic planning can be very well adapted into PMI since the methodology allows project phases to overlap and knowledge areas to interact. Actually it does not only allow it, but even has set up a separate knowledge area for that: integration management. This is why we have adapted PMI into our Oxford 360 approach.

2. Planning has to be more open to change, especially in the fast-changing world of today. One of the good ways to achieve this is following Oxford: big developments which take years to realise can be planned and implemented in a series of self-sufficient stages. This will ensure that the community that will be created will get the most appropriate development and the course will be dynamic enough to allow for market changes. Of course this requires flexibility in the planning and therefore considerable discussions with local and national authorities to enable this optimum solution to be implemented since it is often something new.

One small example, if it turns out that most of the people who have bought (or are planning to buy) houses in a development are young families with kids, then we have make sure that their needs are mostly covered. We need to make sure that there is a sufficient amount of kindergarten places, playgrounds, walking tracks, local schooling is improved, transport and entertainment is sufficient and so on. At the same time, we consider the investment and development profit. Generating a solid investment return means more finance is allocated for our activities, which in turn generates more positive benefit in a virtuous circle.

In PMI you have contingency plans, you have risk management and constant monitoring and controlling. Via change requests that have a certain procedure you can make sure that all changes that will be made are made considering these Oxford 360 Sustainability factors. So in this way you can manage the changes effectively and ensure full compliance with requirements.

3. Many different parties have to be involved in the planning process. That means local people as well as professionals. The more opinions you get, the wider context the planning gets. For Oxford it means generally: meetings with local people, local government, reading strategic studies about the area made by state institutions; meeting with professionals, getting their opinions. At the same time you must limit choices and go for the greater good in solutions chosen.

In PMI these people/organizations are called stakeholders and one of actions in PMI is to create a stakeholder list with requirements, so you can see, the various approaches can be made to effectively connect with a little thinking. Our approach to holistic planning itself is holistic.

As part of our CSR (corporate social responsibility), if the professionals create various studies, we present this to the local community, government, authorities and partners. This is educational material for them, and so the knowledge throughout the country rises and the quality level of developments also improves.

So if you have these 3 points covered, you should be able to start sustainable planning development. Sustainability is economically feasible (in the Oxford model more feasible than a non-sustainable approach) and therefore this type of development is very attractive from a business point of view.

Hadley Barrett www.oxfordsustainable.com