Sustainability Moves
The added value of a meaningful activity
Harald Stieber
ESG factors provide a huge motivation boost for employees because they increasingly highlight the “sense” behind everything that they do. At ATP we are able to see that our vision of wanting to change the world for the better with our buildings is a major concern to our employees.
ESG factors are a source of motivation for employees
Around 38 % of global CO₂ emissions are produced by the construction sector. At the same time, a range of studies show that the complex issue of sustainability is becoming ever more important to employees. The existence of and the aspiration to meet clearly formulated ESG targets are becoming increasingly important for the processes of recruiting – and retaining – staff. This is not just a question of how a company treats its team, but also of what the company itself stands for. When we at ATP talk about changing the world for the better with our buildings, we are particularly concerned about how we cooperate with the people who share our visions. And those people are the – now 1,500 – members of our team.
In order to overcome the challenges to the construction sector in the area of climate neutrality, we need committed and talented individuals, who invest their time, their know-how, and their creativity in the development of innovative solutions that they are also ready to stand up for. This is an incalculable advantage in our interactions with the clients of any project. The logic is simple: If I’m convinced by my product, I’ll also be able to convince others. Translated to our work, this means that if we want to motivate our clients to choose the sustainable approach, then we have to show them our enthusiasm for the issue.
We have clearly formulated the route that we want to take in both our corporate culture and the ATP Green Deal. This vision holds us together and drives us forwards.
As an integrated design office, we at ATP architects engineers have many opportunities to play a leading role as we meet our responsibilities to the environment. And we believe that part of this responsibility is to support the commitment, motivation, and potential for development of our employees in this area. This makes us an attractive company to ambitious and talented employees. And even if matters to all age groups, it is amongst the younger generation that the issue of sustainability is particularly strongly present. Does my work make sense from this perspective? To what extent can my skills contribute to making the world an even slightly better place? Can I identify with my employer? These are the questions that move young professionals. We have clearly formulated the route that we want to take in both our corporate culture and the ATP Green Deal. This vision holds us together and drives us forwards. And the integrated design process offers the best basis for this. Interdisciplinary working is part of our DNA. It is essential for us that our collective knowhow is accessible to every single member of the entire ATP network. This form of transparent knowledge transfer is driven by the mutual exchange between different disciplines.
In the area of sustainability, our in-house research company for sustainable building, ATP sustain, is an important driver. It carries out excellent research work in the field of sustainable building and performs certifications. ATP sustain also ensures that its special knowhow is available to our employees in all design disciplines – architecture, structural and building services engineering – and that these employees also receive the appropriate training. In order to continuously generate expertise in-house, we have created an additional internal structure for sustainable design. Every ATP office and every specialist area of planning has dedicated Sustainability Managers, who are responsible for ensuring that the knowhow generated across the ATP Group is also available to each project. In this way, we are able to offer integrated design with BIM as a standard service to our clients as part of our ATP Green Deal.
It is natural that our successes in this field are a great source of motivation for our team. For example, the CO₂ tool for the calculation of gray emissions, which we developed in-house, received the 2022 Green BIM Award. The development of the tool was only possible due to the hard work of our ambitious employees and it has also generated huge added value for our design process. The prizes won by individual projects with a sustainability focus, such as the presentation of the Austrian Green Planet Building Award 2023 to the Markas Headquarters in Bolzano, provide further important confirmation of our values and our vision. To put it briefly: The issue of sustainability moves our employees to constantly find better solutions. And this can only benefit the entire construction sector.
