June 2026 | SuSu 2026: Beyond the Bolt-On: Making Sustainability Core to How We Deliver Project with Donnie MacNicol

Sustainability matters across every dimension of a project – what it delivers, how it is delivered, and the impact on people, planet and profitability. Leaders and teams make decisions continuously, often without the data or capabilities to interpret and apply them. This is particularly acute for sustainability, which is still treated as an add-on to project delivery rather than integrated with the practices of project management, reporting and controls.

We will describe how to embed sustainability – and in particular the PMI GPM P5 Standard – into everyday project delivery, sharing concepts that can be applied on live projects immediately and giving leaders the information to get ahead of problems.

Applying the 5 Principles from the emerging field of Human-Centric Data (HCD) makes the PMI GPM P5 Standard more accessible, usable and value-adding across stakeholder perspectives:

Broadening involvement of the project team and stakeholders, so a diversity of views balances out biases and strategic misrepresentation

Avoiding reliance on a small cadre of specialists, which leaves sustainability siloed

Increasing value to the project through a clearer view of how decisions both affect and are affected by sustainability

Gathering data anonymously and surfacing insights – continuously or one-off – in a transparent, non-intrusive and action-oriented way, via accessible completion and dynamic reporting using Generative AI.

We will also describe how to capture data from stakeholder groups inside and outside the project, calibrated to their knowledge of and engagement with each PMI GPM P5 category.

Finally, how the output from the PMI GPM P5 Standard, using this approach, can integrate with:

• ESG and Carbon Reporting
• HCD Reporting – insight into the feelings, beliefs and perceptions of those delivering the project, including psychological safety, biases and confidence in success

Ultimately, these blend with traditional project controls and reporting to give decision-makers a single, comprehensive dashboard.