Siemens Mobility Upskills Team Through Sustainability Support

Action Sustainability has developed a close and longstanding relationship with Siemens Mobility to provide sustainability support to the in-house Siemens sustainability team.

This has included support to Siemens to cater for the secondment of Siemens employees to other parts of the business (e.g. a year-long position in Munich), maternity leave cover, and, ongoing project support as part of the Siemens team.

The support provided to Siemens has come in various guises and has included:

• Sustainability Tool (2020-): We have worked with Siemens to embed our Sustainability Reporting Tool on projects. Starting out with a one project pilot we are now working with Siemens to roll out the Tool to enable sustainability data reporting at project and portfolio level.
• Project Level Sustainability Support (2017-2021): Action Sustainability have provided several consultants to act as seconded project sustainability specialists to assist Siemens with project level sustainability delivery. This has involved writing and delivering project specific sustainability objectives to align projects with the requirements of the Network Rail 015 standard for Environmental and Social minimum requirements. Sustainability specialists have been seconded into either a specific high value project, for example Thameslink, Crossrail, or region, for example Wales & West, to ensure that Siemens is meeting project level sustainability commitments.
• Implementation of sustainability initiatives into the business (2017-2021): Through secondees and additional support from members of the team, Action Sustainability have provided support to a wide range of Siemens initiatives such as:
• Understanding how and where Siemens generate Social Value.
• Implementing Fairness Inclusion & Respect training across the business.
• Sustainable Procurement – including ISO 20400 & Procurement Heatmapping.
• Bid Writing (2017-2021): Members of the AS team have written responses for bids submitted to several clients working on rail infrastructure across the regions of the UK.
• Interim Sustainability Manager Support (Apr 2019- April 2020): AS provided an interim sustainability manager to Siemens on a 12-month full time secondment whilst the permanent sustainability manager spent a year working at Siemens head office in Munich. The role involved responsibility for the delivery of corporate and project sustainability objectives for Siemens’ rail automation business.

We maintain a good relationship with Siemens and have been instrumental in delivering the following key outcomes:

• Project delivery of Network Rail Sustainability requirements across a range of projects. This includes writing documentation and then implementing specific sustainability initiatives “on the ground” at project level. Clients include Network Rail (015 Standard) and Transport for Wales (alignment with the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act 2015).

• Running workshops to upskill Siemens staff in topics such as Fairness, Inclusion, and Respect, and Suicide on the Railway.

• Delivering a pilot social value assessment for Siemens work on the Crossrail. Following this Siemens were able to provide tangible, quantitative data to demonstrate the social value that had been generated by the project.

• Building better links with local communities and stakeholders through partnership with the Community Rail Network (CRN). This has included running workshops with CRN members to understand where opportunities for collaboration and potential risks lie as project works develop.

• Supporting and aligning Siemens project activities with the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in Wales. This included support at both the bid stage through to the development of project documentation and the development of initiatives to ensure that bit commitments were met and exceeded.

• In collaboration with the Siemens procurement team, developing a methodology for future local and SME spend heatmapping across Siemens’ delivery regions. This has enabled Siemens to meet project commitments for local and SME spend.

• Being a “critical friend” for Siemens across a broad range of sustainability topics.