Samenvatting

Sustainability is one of the most important challenges of our time. How can we develop prosperity, without compromising the life of future generations? Companies are integrating ideas of sustainability in their marketing, corporate communications, annual reports and in their actions. Projects as instrument of change are crucial to sustainable development. Association for Project Management (past-) chairman Tom Taylor recognizes that “Project and Program Managers are significantly placed to make contributions to Sustainable Management practices”. And at the 2008 IPMA World Congress, Vice-President Mary McKinlay stated “the further development of the project management profession requires project managers to take responsibility for sustainability”. It is for that reason inevitable that „sustainability‟ will find its way to project management methodologies and practices in the very near future. But how is this responsibility put to practice?
This paper explores the concept of sustainability and its application to project management. Based on the studies on the application of these principles in project management we will build the argument that the project management profession should take responsibility for not just for the process of delivering a project, but also for the content and the results of the project itself. Including the sustainability aspects of that result.