Year 2020 was a watershed year for KBR, one of positive change and significant achievement, the company said in its 2020 Sustainability Report.

 

KBR continued executing its strategy to exit commoditised services in high-risk markets while making significant investment in high-end, sustainability-driven proprietary technologies and intellectual property (IP). 

 

Despite the trials of 2020, KBR accelerated its vision, most notably by reorganising the business into a two-segment model featuring its Government Solutions and Sustainable Technology Solutions businesses. And embedded in every business operation or corporate function was a commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles that are the core of its value proposition. 

 

“At KBR, we believe that a commitment to sustainability includes using our capabilities and expertise to help our customers accomplish their sustainability goals, thus creating value for all our stakeholders and incredible opportunities for the business to prosper,” said Stuart Bradie, KBR President & Chief Executive Officer.

 

“Increasingly, our customers are coming to us with their own sustainability objectives, from lowering carbon emissions and increasing energy efficiency to helping governments build roadmaps to low-carbon economies and introducing new, cleaner forms of energy and more sustainable futures for their people.” 

 

The need for new and innovative solutions to accomplish those goals has meant seeking new technologies and processes and new ways of doing business. One such example is our Hydro-PRTsm (plastics recycling technology), offered in collaboration with Mura Technology. 

 

This revolutionary new technology converts end-of-life plastic, which would otherwise be burned, sent to landfills or leaked into the environment, into oil that can be further refined to produce virgin polymers and chemicals — creating a true plastics circular economy.

 

All of this is in addition to the work KBR is doing to walk the talk around its own sustainability objectives. The firm has committed to a net-zero strategy that aligns with the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions and increase energy efficiency in its operations. 

 

KBR has mapped the risks that climate change can present to its business, both physically and transitionally, and are working toward mitigating those risks by meeting near- and long-term carbonreduction targets. 

 

And KBR is signatory to the United Nations (UN) Global Compact and has developed a comprehensive sustainability strategy aligned with the UN’s sustainability development goals (SDGs).

 

These universal standards for creating a cleaner, greener, more just and equitable world are fully in line with KBR’s business objectives. They are also the most important challenges of the time. 

 

“And I believe that KBR’s people — our highly trained and exceptional scientists, technologists and engineers — have the expertise to solve them,” he said.

 

The pandemic has certainly taught KBR much, but above all it has served as a stark reminder of just how important its people are. Accordingly, even when more than 90% of KBR’s office employees were working virtually last year, safeguarding their physical and mental health and safety remained the company’s top priority. 

 

In mid-2020, KBR commissioned a pan-organisational survey to understand what its employees needed most to be successful. Across the company, it gauged that maintaining a sense of belonging while working remotely and keeping mentally fit were some of the key priorities for its employees.

 

KBR’s Global Mental Health and Well-being Committee developed and launched a bold new strategy to ensure its people had the necessary support and resources they needed to thrive. This included enhancing its employee support programme, which provides employees and their families with confidential support and a suite of free resources for proactively taking charge of overall health and well-being. KBR deployed an innovative app-based platform designed to measure factors such as workplace engagement, stress, motivation and focus.

 

“We globalised the Well-being Ambassadors programme, through which employee volunteers are trained to recognise the need and provide support for their colleagues. And at the same time, KBR’s global Inclusion and Diversity Council has been collecting data across the organisation and using it to develop a range of programmes and initiatives that ensure we are becoming a more inclusive, diverse and supportive company.”

 

These and other important elements of its people-centered culture is highlighted in the report. Additionally, one will read about how that cultural shift has coincided with KBR’s strategic evolution into a more forward-leaning, sustainability-driven, agile business focused on solving the environmental and social challenges of today through its IP, deep domain expertise and innovative technology solutions.

 

In 2020, KBR has particularly focused on improving environmental management and protection with regard to its own facilities and assets. To this end, as part of its commitment to Net Zero 2030, KBR is establishing robust internal systems and dedicated teams to collect, monitor and report on emissions and to implement carbon-reduction plans throughout the organisation. 

 

In addition to managing its own impact, KBR’s business has pivoted to focus on delivering sustainable solutions that assist its clients with their own sustainability goals. 

 

The report outlines just some of the key sustainable technology solutions, with examples, that KBR is delivering to its corporate and government clients globally.

 

“Our responsibility as a board is to ensure that our policies and procedures are as robust as

possible to make certain that we operate to the highest standards, and that we continue to review and strengthen all policies that support our sustainability goals. We are also determined that sustainability data collection, management and reporting are of the highest quality and consistent with the rigor we apply to our financial reporting. 

“Management of our sustainability risks is now firmly incorporated into our enterprise risk management processes, and as a board we regularly monitor our risk management progress with a particular focus on ESG risks and opportunities,” said Ann Pickard, Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility Committee Chair.

 

Most importantly, KBR has incorporated sustainability performance into its short-term incentives programme, which is intended to align its employees with KBR’s strategy for achieving success as ONE KBR. 

 

This includes linking a 10% incentive to the successful achievement of key sustainability indicators, including implementation of our Net-Zero Strategy 2030 and improved health and safety indicators (TRIR), with an aim to ensure progress and growth in this area is on par with revenue growth, she added.-- TradeArabia News Service