Sustainability has become a pressing global issue, and as responsible industry leaders, it is essential for us to address the environmental, social, and economic aspects of our projects. By adopting sustainable practices, we can create lasting positive impacts on the environment, enhance the well-being of communities, and drive long term profitability.
In this special feature, we focus on sustainability in the construction industry in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Nesma & Partners
At Nesma & Partners, we take a holistic approach to sustainability, focusing on minimizing our environmental impacts, promoting social responsibility, and maintaining strong governance practices. One of the critical ways we promote sustainability is by incorporating green building certifications, such as LEED, into our construction processes. This ensures that our projects meet the highest energy and resource efficiency standards while also providing a healthier and more sustainable environment for building occupants.
We regularly conduct sustainability assessments and audits to measure our environmental impacts, enabling us to identify improvement areas and track progress over time. This includes monitoring energy consumption, waste generation, water usage, and greenhouse gas emissions, among other indicators.
Another important aspect of our sustainability approach is employee training and engagement. We recognize that our employees play a critical role in promoting sustainability, so we provide training and awareness campaigns to educate them on sustainability principles and best practices.
We also believe in engaging with our stakeholders, including local communities, suppliers, and partners, to promote sustainable practices throughout our value chain. This includes working with local communities to identify and address their sustainability concerns and collaborating with suppliers and partners to promote responsible sourcing and ethical business practices. We developed an ESG framework that will help us to align and monitor our performance with the highest international standard, and we started providing awareness training sessions to our supply chain partners to prepare them to cope with Nesma & Partner’s ESG framework and the construction industry future requirement here in Saudi Arabia.
We believe that measuring the success of our sustainability efforts is crucial to ensure that we are making meaningful progress toward our sustainability goals and net-zero path. We use a variety of critical metrics to track and evaluate our sustainability performance. Some of the key metrics we track include:
• Energy consumption
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Waste generation and recycling
• Water usage
We closely monitor our environmental impact and establish key performance indicators (KPIs) with the aim of reducing our emissions and energy consumption. Additionally, we develop recycling and waste reduction policies and implement water efficiency measures to further minimize our environmental footprint.
Our efforts toward the environmental factors:
• Energy Efficiency: Nesma & Partners has extensive experience in green building projects. Nesma & Partners is developing environmentally friendly, energy-saving construction projects to fulfill the requirements of green buildings. Nesma & Partners has also completed four LEED-certified projects and is currently managing many major projects aiming for various green certifications. Nesma & Partners also monitors carbon footprint and energy consumption and develops reduction strategies. Recently, we installed a hybrid system for our offices in one of our NEOM projects. We generated 23 Kwp to cover the office’s energy requirement and reduce our carbon footprint.
• Water Conservation: conserving water as one of the natural resources is one of our main goals at our facilities. Using low-flow fixtures helps us to achieve our goals. Moreover, we are using our expertise to help our clients to build greener buildings. In one of our design and build projects, the water saved 88% of the annual potable water use by providing efficient water fixtures and Greywater systems for indoor water flushing.
• Sustainable Materials: Nesma & Partners’ local supplier development program aims to foster economic growth and support the local community by partnering with and nurturing local suppliers. Through this program, we identify and engage with potential suppliers within the region, providing them with guidance, resources, and training to enhance their capabilities and competitiveness. By promoting local sourcing, we contribute to developing a robust local supply chain, creating job opportunities, and stimulating economic development. This program reflects our commitment to social responsibility and sustainable business practices while strengthening our relationships with local partners and suppliers.
• Biodiversity Preservation: During Nesma & Partners’ work at one of our infrastructure projects in NEOM, 45,000 cubic meters of soil were preserved by implementing proper erosion control measures. This preservation has not only protected the natural habitat and biodiversity but also contributed to the long-term viability of the project site by maintaining the soil’s nutrient content and moisture retention capacity. Additionally, the soil was reused on the project to reinstate the various temporary quarries.
Nesma & Partners also ensures the creation and monitoring of its impact on the social and community of our sustainability efforts, including community engagement, local employment, and social contributions. In addition, it monitors the participation and effectiveness of our employees’ training and engagement programs to ensure that our employees are knowledgeable and engaged in sustainability practices.
