Skanska’s Deep Green Journey; How can the Building Industry Push Sustainability in Practice: A Case Study of Skanska’s Color Palette™

The environmental impacts that will affect earth due to continued population growth are staggering. They can be seen through the depletion of finite resources, increased pollution, and climate change. These environmental fluctuations will no doubt have a significant impact on how 21st century societies are designed. In order to reduce the potential catastrophes that these environmental issues will bring forth, societies must learn to adapt and accept new methods of building their cities. This paper delves into how the building industry can help address the issues that the world is facing environmentally. The goal of the study is to develop an understanding of how the building industry can push sustainable building practices. It looks at how Skanska AB, the largest Nordic building company, has focused their internal strategies to push towards sustainable building practices. This paper hopes to determine how with the help an internal rating tool, a global organization can reduce their environmental impacts. Through the examination of Skanska’s Color Palette™, key learnings were gained that could be used to reveal how private corporations can make good business sense out of sustainability. The paper also illustrate how Skanska has identified gaps between traditional certification tools and goals of true sustainability, and what that means for the built environment. The paper presents a case study of Skanska’s Color Palette™ as a key aspect of the company’s environmental journey. It looks at how the company was able to repair their reputation and illustrates how they have proved that they are serious about their goal of pursuing a sustainable future. The study involved secondary analysis of both public and Skanska documents, theoretical analysis and 4 semi-structured interviews. The analysis proved that the Color Palette™ is a tool that has great value for private corporations and is something that should be studied by other organizations seeking to reduce their environmental impacts. However, it was clear that if the earth is to progress sustainably, public policy, markes and internal organizations will all have to work together