INTRODUCTION

Each individual assignment has a number of tasks. The purpose of these assignments is to challenge your
perceptions, make you aware of how your thoughts and actions affect the world around you, and how your
choices can shape alternative futures of the world, negatively and positively. Furthermore, these assignments will
help you develop some skill and ability to influence positive behaviours in yourself and others (leadership) that
support sustainable futures. The tasks are structured to practice clear communication skills and enable you to
take a position on a highly complex behavioural topic that has a direct effect on the physical and social world.

This will help you in your career as you will be ever more involved with industries and business practices that are
becoming highly sustainably and efficiency oriented. These assignments will help you become more engaged
with individuals (future team members or colleagues), and give you the opportunity to practice the real challenge
of engagement with people who may have different perspectives and behaviours than you.

These assignments are not optional and completing them comprise about a third of the notional learning hours
for this module. Some assignments require a certain stretch of time to complete (14 days or 30 days), so make
sure you spread the work evenly over the semester to avoid overburdening yourself.

Assignment Points
Assignment 1 - My engagement with the Problem 75

VERY IMPORTANT
FORMAT FOR UPLOAD TO CLICKUP is only PDF.

No word or other document formats will be accepted for Assignments unless discussed otherwise in
class as a whole. Late assignments are not accepted under any circumstance..

Once completed, upload the task to CLCKUP before the specified deadline. Late tasks will not be accepted
under any condition. You need to complete each task. Failure to complete a task will result in a zero task score.
Longform narrative writing will generally be rated and scored based on task requirements, writing and execution
quality in one of these categories:

Fail — topic not covered or no or very weak response (resulting in points subtracted); vague
and poor writing style.

D — bare minimum – no actions or effects or evidence of critical work done

submissions inconsistent with the course content

C — average to good - some activities taken but descriptive effects or critical reflection
missing; or missing evidence of work; or poor quality writing. Inadequate or limited
number of topics addressed or discussed, or many unsupported statements.

B—A — sincere effort made, action taken, comprehensive critical reflection,

evidence of activities. High quality submission, writing style, and
with relevant supported statements.

Poor writing and style or quality will reflect negatively on your marks.

PAGE 2
 ASSIGNMENT 1
MY ENGAGEMENT WITH THE PROBLEM
Our current and future world is the result of individual choices and actions by ordinary
people. The effects of individual actions escalate when groups of people take on these
as part of their “normal” daily behavior. This is true on a personal level, but it is also true
in our business organizations and project behaviors. As individual actions, small actions
may not seem like much, but multiply those actions across a project teams of 500 people
or more, or a planet with 7.2 billion, and there is an enormous cumulative effect. The
purpose of this assignment is to become aware of personal actions and its effects on
people, the environment you are in, and the behaviors of yourself and those around you.

TASK 1 – MY ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

Your ecological footprint is the amount of the environmental resources necessary to produce the goods and
services to support your lifestyle and assimilate your wastes.

Activities

● Use the footprint calculator at https://www.footprintnetwork.org/resources/footprint-calculator/

(similar websites will also be acceptable) to calculate your ecological footprint in planets or in global
hectares. Keep notes of your answers to the questions and write down the results of your initial
assessment.
● Write down 3 actions (min 3, but can be more) that you can take to reduce your footprint.
● Invite at least one other person in your household to do this practice with you (this is helpful to keep you
focused on your commitment).
● Write down the changes you are going to make and make those commitments visible (write it up, place
it somewhere easy to see for all).
● Perform these changes for three weeks (minimum, but can be longer) and run the ecological footprint
again.

You can do this routine several times to see how low you can get your footprint while still living at an acceptable
quality of life.

Report on CLICKUP as PDF

a) What was your ecological footprint initially?

● Describe the starting date, the people involved and all the conditions surrounding your
commitment.
● Describe your plan and approach to get others involved in the process with you.
● What was your reduced footprint after three weeks?
b) Report and Evidence
● Which parts of your plan succeeded and which parts failed? Describe specifically.
● What key lessons did you learn through this entire process?
c) Critical Reflection
● Write commentary (100-150 words) to explain the results and your experience.
● What actions did you take to reduce your footprint? How did others come along with you in your
commitment? What did you notice in yourself as you practised your commitment? How did
others react to you showing leadership in personal actions? What was difficult to do? What was
easy to do?
● Include photos (max 10) that document your actions.

PAGE 3
 ● Do not try to import photos from the web. I will cross check all photos with Google Image
Search so you will risk plagiarism if you attempt to not provide original photos.

TASK 2 – RECOGNIZE WASTE IN ACTIONS AND PROCESSES

We can reduce our own ecological footprint considerably through the three R’s – Reduce, Re-use and Recycle.
That is: reducing your use of resources, re-use resources, and recycle resources so that there is almost no waste.
Most of what we throw away can be reused or recycled, but this means we have to manage our waste at the
point of source (that is you). One way is to separate organic waste from inorganic waste and hazardous waste
(medicines, e-waste, paint and cleaners) from non-hazardous waste.

To get a better understanding of the impact of not managing our waste streams, watch the following YouTube
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUM58LIU2Lo

Similarly, on a project level, there are many forms of waste that undermine the future of professional and project
work. We will get into that later with Assignment 2. In your career as a construction economics professional or
other, it is an incredibly valuable skill to be able to recognize wasteful actions in processes and start to work on
eliminating them. It is equally important to bring others along with you on this journey — which is often the
hardest part.

Activities

● Waste-finding as a habit is naturally acquired when the focus is personal. For one week, write down
things that can be considered wasteful in your office, school environment or household. There are many
ways of understanding waste and systems of waste.
○ Physical wastes (pollution, objects, stuff in the way)
○ Knowledge wastes (too much communication without a purpose, overproducing work, etc.)
○ Process wastes (too many steps, bottlenecks, delays, waiting, etc)
● To explore this task, use some of these questions to get you going
○ Where/When are things piling up?
○ Where/When are things “standing still”?
○ Where/When is a process succeeding, and where is it failing?
○ Where/When are processes failing that are resulting in wasteful actions?
○ Where/When is there a “lack of a process” altogether?
○ What/When is unsafe to do or never gets done?
● Play with these questions in the world around you. Observe. Find out. Pick topics that interest you. Keep
your attention on the little difficulties and dissatisfactions — this is how you will enhance your
waste-finding skills. The list can be as long as you can find waste around you, but a minimum of 15 items
is required for this task.
● Make a point of helping others notice waste in the same way that you are. Do it one-on-one or in several
small conversations. Plan your conversations before you engage people. Deliberately engage others in
conversation about where wastes are. Notice what people say or speak about, pick up on what they
believe are wasteful actions or processes. Continue to do this until a critical mass of waste-seeing is in
place.
● Of the list of wasteful actions or processes you encounter, write down clear improvement actions you can
take to eliminate them.
● Commit to at least 3 of them, take at least 3 distinct actions and document the experience fully.

Report on CLICKUP as PDF

a) Provide a clear list of wastes (15) you identified in your work, school or home environment.
▪ Your list must include at least one Physical, Knowledge, or Process wastes (can’t all just be Physical
for example).
b) Report and Evidence

PAGE 4
 ▪ Provide a summary of the initial (first) conversations and describe what you’ve learned from others
about wastes around you.
▪ Describe which improvement actions you made to tackle the issues on your list.
▪ Describe what worked, what didn't, and what can be changed.
c) Critical Reflection
▪ What did you learn from others? What did you notice in yourself as you practiced your commitment?
How did others react to you starting conversations about waste, and the actions you took? Write a
short commentary (100-150 words) to explain the results and your experience with subsequent
conversations.
▪ What is the result of the 3 actions you committed to? What was the result and experience of
performing this action? Provide a descriptive photograph or two of the activities and experience.

TASK 3 – UNDERSTANDING RESOURCES AND PROCESSES OF WASTE

While Task 2 has to do with building skills in seeing and eliminating waste in activities
and processes around us, Task 3 is about understanding systems and the resource flows.

Fresh water is one of our most critical resources. The human body cannot survive for very
long without water so it is one of our most basic needs. It is also a resource that is most
under threat as a result of climate change, over-pumping of aquifers and dams, and
pollution.

On a project level, the lack of water will undermine the efficiency of the project, but also
drastically change the choices we make about how we build, and what we build with. Water is scarce and highly
contested. The Rand Water Board has warned municipalities in Gauteng that once Medupi comes online, it will
no longer be able to provide enough water to the province to meet its current household and industrial needs.
This is an international issue — with Sao Paulo and cities in California already experiencing restricted water
supply similar to our electrical load shedding.

Bringing focused attention to water and its uses is becoming very important. For more information on this you
can read the following articles:

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/2015/05/05/water-shortages-about-to-put-load-shedding-in-the-dark

Table 1 sets out the World Health Organization standard for minimum amounts of water required per person per
day. You can see it is not much. In South Africa poor households receive 6,000 litres of water per month for free.
This translates into less than 50 litres per person per day in a four person household.

Table 1: Minimum Amounts of water required per person per day.

Amount
Level of Allocation Use
(litres / person /day)
Minimum ‘survival’ allocation TOTAL 5-7
(sustainable for only a few days) Drinking 3-4
Food preparation and cleanup 2-3
Medium term allocation TOTAL 15-20
(sustainable for a few months) Drinking 3-4
Food preparation and cleanup 2-3
Personal hygiene 6-7
Laundry 4-6

● For three days aim to reduce your personal daily water use to as close to ten litres per day.
● Take your commitment seriously and note the results of the experiment and its consequences.

PAGE 5
 ● Describe the entire system of water and your behaviour with it.
● Decide how you are going to spend your resource (water) ahead of time, and see if you can stick to this
commitment without sacrificing quality of life. This includes all water for drinking, cooking (if you do not
cook, then ask the cook how much water they used and subtract this from your allowance), and personal
hygiene (for practical reasons we’ll exclude flushing the toilet).

PLEASE NOTE
For obvious reasons, do not do this on days when you are doing any strenuous physical activity or are sick. Pay
attention to your health, and notice the impact of the experiment on your choices and those around you.

Report on CLICKUP as PDF

a) Describe your Water System at home using Systems Theory approach

a. What is the “system of water” in your household? Draw a diagram with annotations and explain
clearly.
b. Where does water come from, and where does it go?
c. How much can you estimate comes in and what goes out?
d. How is water “used” in the system?
b) Write a short paragraph (± 100 words) about your experience – what was the most challenging aspect of
this task? How much water do you estimate you used or saved?
c) Thinking about everything for which you use water, do you think you will be able to live comfortably on
the 50 litres of water per day that poor households in South Africa receive? What would be the most
difficult for you?
d) Identify a case for “Tragedy of the Commons” in the built environment practice in South Africa.
Definition for this task: The Tragedy of the Commons is an economic theory that describes how people
often use natural resources to their advantage without considering the good of a group or society as a
whole. This can include contractual setups, resource and utility use on projects, human capital and
innovation practices, site issues or anything else that comes to mind for you. Articulate the current
situation, what makes it “tragic”and how we could reconfigure the situation for better and sustainable
outcomes.

LEARNING OUTCOME FOR ASSIGNMENT 1

Students become more aware of their personal contribution to the environmental problems of the world and
their reliance on critical resources.

RUBRIC FOR ASSIGNMENT 1

Task Deliverable Points

1 My Ecological Footprint 5
Report and Evidence 5 15
Critical Reflection 5
2 Lists of Wastes (Physical, Knowledge, Process or Other) 15
Report and Evidence
List of Improvement Actions 3 35
Taking each action, result and experience of these actions, reflection. 7
Critical reflection on the process 10
3 Description of the System of Water in your household explained through basic 5
systems theory
Your general experience of living on 10 litres of water/day 5 25
Commentary on living on 50 litres of water/day 5

PAGE 6
Tragedy of the Commons Task 10
TOTAL 75

PAGE 7