The new Envision system, designed to rate infrastructure project sustainability, will incorporate one industry firm's approach to measuring "return on investment" and hopefully become a tool to better predict potential outcomes, said officials at the product's launch in Washington, D.C., on April 3.
Omaha-based HDR developed the tool to identify and monetize potential risks and outcomes associated with projects. Within the next year, Envision developers—the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure and the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at Harvard University—will marry elements of the sustainability ROI approach to the rating system.