Engineering group Fluor’s report does a disservice to the company’s sustainability efforts

Fluor's Sustainability Report – Beyond the Blueprint – promises to provide details of Fluor's “economic, environmental and social commitments and capture Fluor's relationship with the world". The report states that Fluor "is more than a business" and that the company goes "beyond the blueprint to optimize what's possible”.

The chairman and CEO's introductory letter, a full two pages long, is full of promise. He says Fluor projects "fuel global commerce, stimulate economic development and improve the quality of life for millions of people around the world". This exciting opening leads the reader to expect a report that will be chock full of examples of the innovative ways in which this engineering project management company and its 40,000 employees are changing the world.

Unfortunately, the CEO introduction is the only thing that goes beyond the blueprint. The rest of the report is as blueprint as you can get and a fairly drab account of policies and activities. The report is written as an orderly series of responses to GRI disclosures (blueprint-style). There is nothing innovative about this report – in fact, the amount of copy-paste from the previous report is noticeable – and no evidence of the lives of people being vastly changed as a result of another year of sustainable progress. No case studies, no stakeholder voices, hardly any images. There is a disconnect between the visionary opening of the leadership and actual communication of impacts.

G4 – one big misunderstanding

The report is self-declared to be G4 “Core” level. It looks and feels exactly like the 2012 report, which was G3 Application Level B. The new report contains the same sections and the same content, more or less, updated with 2013 numbers. Aside from the GRI Index, which uses G4 references, there is one page of difference. Fluor, in response to the material disclosure requirements, lists a set of 34 GRI material Aspects (most of the ones which are pre-defined by GRI). Their relevance is not explained, they are just listed. These Aspects were determined internally by the Fluor Sustainability Committee and do not appear to be the product of stakeholder consultation. G4 requires reference to Aspect Boundaries – where impacts occur.

Fluor states that all material Aspects are material both inside and outside the organisation, except for market presence, which is material at an internal level only. In the performance indicator section, despite this being a “Core" report, Fluor has listed all the indicators for all the aspects in GRI order, including, for example, biodiversity, which is not material. For most of these indicators, Fluor writes "not reported", making it quite difficult to see what actually was reported. Even some indicators required to support Fluor's stated material Aspects are not reported. Market presence, for example, is supported by two performance indicators. Fluor reports neither.

All this is evidence of a big misunderstanding about what G4 is all about. The company has simply taken its existing internal thinking, existing reporting process, existing report layout, a lot of the existing reporting content and overlaid it in to a report called G4, changing the indicator references and performance data but little else. This is a shame: G4 could have been an opportunity for Fluor to deliver a more mature report, one that focuses on the very impacts – fuelling commerce, transforming lives etc – which the CEO is proud to attest to at the start of the report.

Positive sustainability performance

It should be remembered that a sustainability report is as much about performance as it is about the art of reporting. When a report applies the GRI framework in a poor way, it is tempting to think this is a reflection of the reporting company's performance. This is not always the case. With Fluor, if the reader gets beyond the G4 debacle, there is evidence of positive sustainability activity. Some 12% of procurement spend is with diverse suppliers and a Supplier Diversity programme is active in the U.S. Total recordable injuries declined slightly in 2013 and at 0.30 per 200,000 hours, the rate is good for such a large company. Fluor reports 2013 reductions in 2013 CO2e emissions in each of Scope 1, 2 and 3 and a 12% reduction in emissions intensity normalised to revenue. The company engages within its industry and sector in collaborative partnerships. Overall, this is evidence of a positive basis of sustainability awareness and activity. However, the reader is lacking the blueprint for vision. Aside from the CEO statement, there is no strategy, no goals or targets, hardly any alignment between material issues and reported content, and no sense of impact or change that Fluor is supporting. For a company that clearly is making progress, this report does not do justice to these efforts.

Snapshot

• Follows GRI? GRI G4 Core – sort of
• Assured? No
• Materiality analysis? Not really – just a list of GRI Aspects
• Goals? No
• Targets? No
• Stakeholder input? No
• Seeks feedback? Provides a contact point
• Key strengths? The CEO statement
• Chief weakness? The lack of material focus
• Pleasant surprise? Nice chart on calls to the ethics hotline

Elaine Cohen is a sustainability consultant and reporter at Beyond Business, and a CSR blogger. Email: elainec@b-yond.biz

CR report review  CR Reporting  engineering  Fluor