The Green Value Engineering Methodology: A Sustainability-Driven Project Management Tool for Capital Projects in Process Industry

Process industry renovation is mostly driven by business objectives like productivity enhancement and cost reduction, which hinder the “shift towards a sustainable manufacturing” called by political and academic institutions. In this paper, the project management methodology of Value Engineering, used for cost reduction in large capital projects, is extended to improve not only economic figures, but also environmental sustainability indicators. The methods can guide project design to reduce the consumption of natural resources and the generation of waste, closing a gap between sustainability targets and production needs. Sustainability metrics derived from a simplified life cycle assessment approach are used to achieve quick but reliable estimates of the environmental impact reductions against a base scenario. The project governance is thus supported when assessing potential trade-offs between environmental and economic advantage, encouraging shared and de-risked decisions. Even though limited by the project boundaries of time and budget and by the simplified impact assessment approach, the method promotes a lean and incremental implementation of sustainable manufacturing practices, applicable also to routinary interventions. The methodology is illustrated through application examples from a real case study, an EUR 100 M chemical plant expansion project for a pharmaceutical company in Italy.