Ventia and our client, Transurban, have established a joint Sustainability Governance Group to advance sustainability in the communities where we work.
The power of our partnership comes from collaboration, embedding sustainability into decision making, and our shared drive to make meaningful and measurable sustainability improvements.
Transurban is one of the world's largest toll road operators, with operations in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, as well as in the United States and Canada. As an industry leader, Transurban sets high standards for its performance on social and environmental issues and invests in both areas to create social inclusion and manage environmental impacts.
Ventia provides traffic incident response and maintenance services on motorways and tunnels across Australia to Transurban, one of the world's largest toll road operators. Transurban sets high standards for its performance on social and environmental issues and invests in both areas to create social inclusion and manage environmental impacts - an approach strongly aligned with Ventia's commitment to making infrastructure work for our communities, and doing that in a sustainable way.
The Sustainability Governance Group
Established in 2019, our joint Sustainability Governance Group (SGG) is a taskforce, comprised of key leaders from both businesses. The Group meets regularly to discuss new and better ways of working, develop new initiatives, and monitor
the progress of our mutual sustainability agenda.
Matthew Brennan, Head of Sustainability Strategy at Transurban, says that Transurban was excited to partner with committed businesses like Ventia.
Exploring what's possible and pushing into new and emerging areas of social and environmental sustainability is key to the success of both Ventia and Transurban when it comes to moving the dial in Sustainability.
Choosing initiatives and establishing a baseline
The Group's focus areas have evolved over time to include carbon emissions, diversity and inclusion, waste management and modern slavery.
Group Executive for SHEQ Christian Frost says that mapping the current state for each of these areas was crucial in understanding how big of a journey we had to take to get where we wanted to go.
'We have lofty goals when it comes to sustainability," Christian says. "I think that's what's so exciting about it. As one of the largest essential services providers in Australia and New Zealand we have the opportunity to really make a difference with what we do.
"Having said that, we are being methodical and practical in researching and rolling out these initiatives. We want them to be successful."
Successes so far
2021 saw the SGG achieve initiatives under each focus area; and despite working through the pandemic, we have seen great progress, such as:
- Carbon emissions: We scoped, ordered and are preparing to introduce our first custom-built fully electric truck-mounted attenuator (TMA).
- Waste management: We consolidated waste contracts in July 2021, adding new recycling streams and engaged an Indigenous waste contractor to boost waste recovery.
- Diversity and inclusion: We commenced a shared value approach to engaging with social and Indigenous enterprises. Through the SGG-endorsed steering committee an Indigenous business was engaged in late 2021 providing landscaping apprentices to our New South Wales motorways contracts.
- Modern slavery: An industry-first pilot training workshop was held at the Cross City Tunnel in Melbourne in June. A joint collaboration with Transurban and Anti-Slavery Australia, the session educated attendees about potential instances of modern slavery, which may be detected in road operations.
David McPadden, Group Execitive - Transport says:
Our collaboration with Transurban on sustainability is generating great ideas that will deliver enduring and positive outcomes to our communities and environment.
It's partnerships like this that demonstrate how we can elevate our impact through shared commitment and focused action. We see a real opportunity to replicate this model with other clients in the future to accelerate progress and deliver enduring and positive outcomes to our communities.
