Building Better World

Our Purpose: BUILDING A BETTER WORLD

MWH is engaged in a journey; to put a sustainability ethos at the core of our company. We are in the water and environmental infrastructure business, and all our projects serve people or the planet – improving basic services worldwide, and/or preserving and improving the environment. These purposes have driven our projects all over the world, since the company was founded in 1844, and have been one reason many have chosen to work in MWH. Now, within the frame of ‘sustainability’, our efforts are being re-focused on the latest environmental and social challenges our world faces, and we capture this in our purpose: to Build a Better World. Many of our people are passionate and dedicated to this, and our leadership team is committed to investing in a sustainable future.

A practical expression of our purpose is our Climate Change Commitment, an internal Corporate Social Responsibility programme developed in 2006 with the involvement of our clients, our staff and the communities in which we work and live.

Our globally agreed Core Values are at the heart of the company, reflecting our desire to “Build a Better World”:

“Our employees are our greatest assets and we will grow, inspire and protect them”. MWH is committed to actively encouraging diversity through our people and our activities as we truly believe in the value of a diverse workforce, to both inspire our people and grow our business. One of our climate change commitments is focused on reducing our own carbon footprint, with the target of becoming a carbon neutral company. This reflects our employees desire to make a difference by reducing energy and consumption in their everyday work. You can view our activities towards both reducing our footprint and being more sustainable here. We have measured our carbon footprint and are implementing policies to reduce our footprint year on year.

“We will be uncompromising in our determination to achieve product excellence and in turn, improve the world’s quality of life”. Our everyday work – through strategy, optioneering , design and construction - is focused on reducing impacts to the environment and improving society as cost effectively as possible, whilst meeting client needs with superior project design and delivery. Many of our projects have low carbon footprints and energy use, have green building standards associated with them, directly benefit and enhance the environment and reduce material consumption use as far as possible. Additionally, we are committed to becoming thought leaders in sustainability and climate change through hosting client forums that bring together local and global experts to discuss the issues we are facing and the most sustainable ways to respond.

“We are committed to being involved citizens, both as a business and as individuals, in improving the communities where we reside and work”. We want to leave a positive legacy in the communities we work in so are partnering with our clients to deliver educational modules to schools and other educational forums all over the world focused on the water cycle and climate change impacts. We are also actively participating in community projects such as tree planting and other community and sporting events.

Our reputation as a trustworthy business partner is critical to our business success. Some 70% of our work comes through repeat business with long-standing clients, with who we have trusting relationships. Our reputation with them is paramount to our success; as is our technical leadership reputation in the sectors that we work in. Underpinning all that we do is our individual and company integrity, as laid out in these Core Values, supported by ethics and anti-corruption codes and training. Although we of course use targeted communications, our reputation is really a result of who we are seen to be, and what we are seen to do. All our staff, and how they behave every day, are the real foundation of our reputation.

“Our business goals are only met when mutually we make our clients successful and we are fairly rewarded” By getting all these things right, delivered through our project management, Quality, Safety, Health and Environmental management systems, we serve our clients’ needs, and so make them successful and economically sustainable. Then, our internal management systems, coupled with careful commercial risk management and contracts, ensure that we also make our target profits and create wealth. This wealth is shared between our staff, through bonus and our 100% employee ownership structure, thus serving a key social sustainability objective. Our profit and wealth creation is the result of success in all the other things that we do.