WSP USA released Future Ready: Your Organization’s Guide to Rethinking Climate, Resilience and Sustainability,” a book that explores how organizations can rethink their climate mitigation and resilience practices for greater impact. The book serves as a guide for business, government and other infrastructure organization leaders to set and implement sustainability and resilience strategies in complex project and operating environments, in addition to other environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals.

Co-authored by Alastair MacGregor, executive business line leader for property and buildings at WSP; and Tom Lewis, a climate, resilience and sustainability consultant, “Future Ready” offers perspectives from a team of WSP practice leaders and subject matter experts with deep expertise in risk assessment, planning, engineering, finance, project and program implementation, and advisory consulting. The authors share practical examples and case studies that draw on hundreds of completed WSP projects across a full range of client organizations, markets, sectors and scales. Their insights show readers how to engage with stakeholders and plan, implement and measure the impacts of their initiatives, while also communicating their results. 

“Every day, we help clients align their sustainability goals with core business and organizational goals, and we know how essential it is to go beyond the ‘why’ to provide practical guidance on how leaders can confront increasingly complex challenges in this space,” MacGregor said. “Grounded in our proven Future Ready process, this book equips readers with practical strategies that can reduce risk, make the most of existing resources, and drive return on investment.” 

The book explores ways that leaders and project managers can confront four megatrends: climate change, shifting societal trends and a growing focus on equity, increasing pressure on natural resources and ecosystems, and rapidly developments in technology. Using WSP projects as examples of approaches to these megatrends, MacGregor and Lewis identify effective ways readers can take action. 

The first part of the book is a tour of a dynamic and changing world, looking at how climate impacts are driving innovation, sustainability and equity in buildings, transportation, infrastructure, resources, cities and organizations. The second part of the book is a roadmap for organizations to start or accelerate their journey to a more sustainable and resilient future via target setting, tools and technologies, risk assessment and reporting, nature-based solutions and climate finance, among others. 

The foreword to the book was written by Spiro N. Pollalis, Harvard Design School professor and director of the Zofnass Program for the Sustainability of Infrastructure; and Anthony Kane, president and CEO of the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure.