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50 • Green Project Management

may be an extreme example, and it is necessary for the project manager
to consider the cycle of sustainability as part of “understanding the green
aspects of their projects.” This aspect of the ideation phase will be covered
7
in more depth in Section II of this book.

environmental sCoPe
Understanding and controlling the scope of the project is a well-known
core of project management responsibility, and PMs who do this well are
the ones that succeed. Is there such a thing as “environmental scope”?
Really this equates to the life cycle thinking we discussed earlier. In
thinking about the environmental scope of a project, it is important for
the project manager (and the team) to use the environmental lens—and
the life cycle view—to which we’ve referred before. Thinking about both
the project itself and its processes (especially the resources it consumes),
and the product of the project in operation and the resources it will con-
sume during operation, the environmental scope can be determined.
Well, not really. We also assert that the PM must expand their view (see
Chapters 9 and 10) even to the time at which the product of the project
will be disposed of. What environmental considerations from that time
in the perhaps distant future (from a PM’s viewpoint, anyway) may work
their way back to the present and affect project scope now? For example,
even if the project is a wind farm or other green endeavor, has the team
thought through to what happens when that wind farm is decommis-
sioned? Considerations such as this may “feed back” into project scope
because it could change what materials are used in the construction of
the turbine towers and blades.

environmental risks
Recall first and foremost that risks are defined as both threats and oppor-
tunities—negative risks being considered threats and positive risks being
considered opportunities. With that in mind, the project manager can
see that many environmental aspects and their impacts on the project are
really project risks (threats and opportunities).