Projects > Our Approach

Our approach. Informed, focused and results oriented.

While all client engagements are unique, Concept Green employs a structured approach to its work. Regardless of the type of work we do together, a typical engagement progresses along these phases:

Discovery phase During the discovery phase, we learn about your organization, collect performance measures and identify project team members and subject matter experts who will contribute to the project. During this time, we ask a lot of questions and review a lot of material in order to deliver a quality work product that meets your needs, fits your culture and exceeds your expectations.

Planning phase The planning phase outlines our work together and ensures that we’re on the same page in terms of timing, tasks, resources, roles and responsibilities. During this phase, we develop a detailed project plan, timeline and project protocols for our work together. Once you've signed off on the project plan, we’re ready to get into production mode.

Production phase This is when the heavy lifting occurs — during production, we crunch the numbers, write the reports, perform the audits and assessments and design the campaigns and programs.

Testing phase Now that we’ve completed the heavy lifting, we can test our work on a target audience to make sure we’re on track before we implement your program, publish your report or roll out your campaign.

Implementation phase Once we’ve tested and refined the work product, we're ready for “go-live” and we roll out the program, campaign, performance measures or report to your intended audience.

Verification phase Following the “plan, do, check, act” model, all of our work includes a verification phase. How are you doing? Is your program working? What do your stakeholders think? Are your improving and progressing towards your goals? Regardless of the type of project, we always verify the project results with qualitative and quantitative feedback.

Project Closeout phase Concept Green’s goal is to educate your organization throughout our work together so we can eventually turn the long-term program management over to you. We don’t consider ourselves successful until we’ve worked ourselves out of a job, but we want to make sure you’re ready to take the reins before we roll off the project. During the project closeout phase, we discuss a turnover strategy, identify any remaining knowledge and skill transfer that needs to occur, and provide ad-hoc assistance until you're ready to “own” the program or process we’ve helped you establish.

Concept Green Project Logistics

We’ve all been on nightmare project teams – bad communication, slipping deadlines, scope creep – all hallmarks of poor project management and logistics.

Concept Green clients don’t have to worry about their projects – we worry for you, and we provide the tools and resources for clients to check our progress at any time. Our secured, web-based client project portal provides real-time access to our project plans, updates, files and tasks. Clients can see who’s doing what, how long it’s taking, and whether or not we’re on track.

Our brief weekly status meetings (typically 15-20 minutes, but longer if you need to) ensure that we’re performing to our client’s expectations, and that there are no surprises throughout the project. In these meetings, we review the project plan, quickly scan current and pending tasks, and look closely at any potential project risks well before they occur. We keep you posted on our billings and hours, and you can rest assured that we will stay on time and budget.

Is Your Organization Ready for a Sustainability Initiative?

With any organizational change, there has to be a degree of readiness and commitment before an initiative can launch and have an expectation of success. Sustainability efforts, in this way, are much like other corporate initiatives your organization has probably experienced: quality initiatives, management restructuring, financial reporting changes, or mergers - transformations that both shift the corporate culture and require behavioral changes in staff that may or may not have completely bought-in to the initiative.

We’re here to help you design programs, measure performance and publish reports. But these efforts do take time, and they do require commitment from key personnel to be successful.

We have worked with a variety of clients and have found that the most successful sustainability efforts are developed by those organizations that have the following resources, corporate values, and infrastructures in place:

• Board- and executive-level commitment to organizational sustainability
• A dedicated resource with authority and budget to implement sustainability at your organization
• An existing quality program, which indicates a culture that takes a systems approach to improvement and has processes in place for tracking, collecting and reporting performance metrics.
• A solid corporate strategic planning and risk management process
• A strong corporate governance structure and clear lines of communication, oversight, management and performance review from the mail room up to the board room. 

Not sure about your organization’s readiness, or curious about how you can build momentum for a sustainability program in your company? Call us. Our best sense of how to approach your organization's unique situation will come from you, and what you can tell us about your culture, goals, and priorities.