The document discusses sustainable development and the need for professionals like engineers to reposition towards sustainability. It defines sustainable development as meeting present needs without compromising future generations' ability to meet their own needs. It identifies several challenges to sustainable development including ineffective communication, lack of collaboration, and lack of confidence among women professionals. The document provides solutions such as establishing strategic plans, collaborating with others, innovating technologies, and promoting effective advocacy and communication programs to evaluate audiences and goals. The overall message is that achieving sustainability requires concerted effort and cooperation across all sectors.

1. Beyond the Codes: Repositioning Towards
a Sustainable Development
by Engr. Nimot Muili MSC; MNSE,
Civil Infrastructures Engineer
Lead Auditor - Quality Management System ISO 9001:
2008
Chairman, Association of Professional Women
Engineers of Nigeria, Lagos Chapter (APWEN Lagos)

2. * INTRODUCTIONS &DEFINITIONS
* WHERE WE ARE
* THE NEED
* REQUIRED KEY FACTORS
* CHALLENGES
* BASIC COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
* FACTS
* SOLUTION
* CONCLUSION
CONTENT

3. INTRODUCTIONS & DEFINITION
According to International Institute of Sustainable Development, IISD,
"SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT in a simple term means development that
meets the NEEDS OF THE PRESENT without compromising the ability of
FUTURE GENERATIONS to meet their own needs.
 NEED - Necessity or Obligation
 FUTURE - Time regarded as still to come.
Why are these terms important to us as Female
Child, Mothers, Wives . . . and Professionals

4. INTRODUCTIONS & DEFINITION
As Professionals we support families (directly & Indirectly) by cooperating with
others (Professionals & Non Professionals) to
- Earn Wages
- Preserve Professional & Traditional knowledge
- Maintain Biodiversity,
- Ensure Household Food security
- and Maintain Nutritional Needs & Balance
As engineers and project managers we are involved in one or more of the following
project management phases either as Team Leads or Team Member
 Initiation
 Planning
 Execution
 Monitoring / Control
 Closing

5. Women are just under half of the general
workforce in the various industries . . . Yet the
custodian of the future
THE NEED TO REPOSITION. . .

6. REQUIRED KEY FACTORS
As professionals, strategy for sustainable development involves bringing existing initiatives
closer to an effective strategy, a vision and set of co-coordinated mechanisms and
processes to improve their complementarity, smooth out inconsistencies, and fill gaps when
needed. These includes :
• People-centered: To ensure long-term beneficial impacts on all
• Long-term vision with a clear timeframe
• Cost / Budgetary priorities: to ensure that plans have the financial resources to achieve
the desire objectives
• Effective participation. to open up debate to new ideas and sources of information;
expose issues that need to be addressed; enable problems, needs and preferences to be
expressed; identify the capabilities required to address them; and develop a consensus
on the need for action that leads to better implementation.
• commitment and influential attitude
• Develop and build on existing capacity
• Strategize to expand your network

7. CHALLENGES
• Lack of Confidence – sometimes we don't always believe
that we have something of value to say or that we deserve
to be taken seriously.
• Appearance (women tend to be judged far more harshly for wardrobe
malfunctions than men), these include
* Clothing
* Make-up
* Composure
* Physical appearance - Body Size , Facial Look, Dressing, Hair Style
* Voice - A soft or high-pitched voice could be a challenge. As women,
we are associated with soft voice naturally which is sometimes
associated with timidness or lack of assurance. A soft voice can also
make it difficult for the audience to hear, which then makes it
challenging for them to stay engaged.
• Lack Collaboration / Cooperation (Internal & external)

8. CHALLENGES
One of the major challenges of sustainable development is
Ineffective Communication
o Information overload – No Assessment & Evaluation
o not readily available / Affordability
o hard to evaluate
o not output-oriented enough
o lack the necessary knowledge and skills for strategic communication
o Focus on convincing people individually while their social sphere is not analyzed
o Communication is an end-of-pipe activity, isolated from the rest of a project
o Content and message are secondary and cannot answer “why” or “what” questions
o Target Audience Uncategorized
o Irrelevancy – unfiltered Information
o Inappropriate Medium
o Lack of effective Policies, Procedure and / or Technology

9. BASIC COMMUNICATION COMPONENT
The four (4) basic requirements
• Sender - Source (where the message originates)
• The Message
• Transmitter /+ Transmission Medium (device used to transmit
the message)
• Receiver / Destination - (Medium used to receive the message /
will be placed)
Sender
ReceiverMedium
Message

10. COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
To promote good Information Exchange, there is need to establish efficient
communication and promote REGULAR FEEDBACK ANALYSIS

11. FACTS
Its no news that the world is now a global village . . . . Yes
BUT how well are we connected? How close are We?
The fact is that Information and development are like Siamese twins.

12. FACTS
For Nigeria the trend shows that Mobile
Communication Channels is common and
growing to become the default communication
channel. These mobile devices affords the
owner the option of VOICE, VIDEO AND
DATA communication all in one.

13. SOLUTIONS
• Self-Confidence and assertiveness – This is a long term endeavor.
* Visualize yourself feeling confident and recognized, by reading your
stakeholders reactions, that you are indeed adding value
* Know something about your meeting(s) / projects and take time to be
extremely well prepared
* anticipate what questions , problems and approach to
answering and solving them
• Appearance - Focus, Smile, Show Commitment and embracing
strategies that will make it happen
• Be discipline – Promote What You do & What You Plan to Do
Remember - No fine work can be done without concentration
and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. ” — Max Beerbohm

14. SOLUTION
• Leadership – Lead by Action
• Collaboration – Show concern
• Innovate - to make impact, Efficient, Quality & Affordability
• Promote Effective Advocacy Programme
• Show Responsibility & Cooperation
• Take Up New Challenges - Explore new grounds, Be open to
meet new challenges
• Access & Evaluate New Technological requirements

15. SOLUTION
Effective Communication should be concise and straight forward,
effective & affordable on the go to :
• supports effective participation and decision making
• Communication is a crucial strategy
• Improve management tool
• Conflict resolution
• management knowledge and information systems
• helps balancing top-down and bottom-up approaches
• Monitoring & Evaluation of long-term vision
• building alliances for goal- and actions
• setting priorities
• logical consistency in unfolding plans
• Powerful elements for strategy
• managing activities, budgets and human resources systematically

16. Summary
• Have a strategic plan
• Collaborate with others
• Be open to new challenges
• Establish Effective Communication
• Evaluate your targeted audience
• Define your challenges - Technological as well as
personal
• Set realistic expectation - Perfection is achieved with
continuous practice
• Keep your eye on your set goals
• Carry out continuous appraisal

17. Remember . . .
• Said is not yet heard
• Heard is not yet understood
• Understood is not yet approved
• And approved is not yet done
All hand must be on deck to achieve a Sustainable
Environment . . . It begins with YOU, spread the
news.
Together we can make it happen

19. COMMENTS / QUESTIONS

20. MY CONTACT
nimot.muili@hotmail.com
lagosapwen@yahoo.co.uk