Sustainability Assessment Report of Timberwell

This report assesses the sustainability of Timberwell Construction Company in terms of economy, society, and environment. It examines the challenges faced by the company and the measures taken to sustain the business. The report uses GRI standards to make the assessments.

Running head: SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT REPORT OF TIMBERWELL
Sustainability Assessment Report of Timberwell
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1SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT REPORT OF TIMBERWELL
Executive Summary
Objective of this report is to assess the sustainability of the Timberwell Construction
Company in Stanwell Council District with respect to economy, society and environment.
The report provided all the necessary information regarding all the three aspects. It is
discussed in the report how the company dealt with the adversities it faced in economic,
social and environmental grounds and how it solved the issues and tried to sustain in the
business. By using the GRI standards the report has been made and, in the end, it has been
discussed that in from which aspect Timberwell is sustainable and from which not.

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Economic Sustainability.............................................................................................................3
Climate Change......................................................................................................................3
Corruption..............................................................................................................................4
Anti-Competitive Behaviour..................................................................................................4
Environment Sustainability........................................................................................................5
Energy consumption...............................................................................................................5
Effect of activities on the environment..................................................................................6
Environmental laws................................................................................................................6
Social Sustainability...................................................................................................................7
Employment...........................................................................................................................7
Organizational discrimination................................................................................................7
Local community development programmes.........................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Timberwell Constructions Company is an organization in Australia, which is involved
in construction of residential buildings. Currently, it is developing residential facilities in the
Stanwell Council District. In this period, the company faced few social, economics and
environmental challenges due to arise of few unwanted situations caused due to both internal
and external disturbances. However, to cope with the situations the company took few
measures to counter the effect of the adversities occurred. It is thus required to be assessed
that how the company with the taken measures mitigates the challenges and sustains with
these adversities going on. Thus, to assess the sustainability of the corporation in the areas of
social, economic and environment, this report has taken the approach of GRI standards to
make the assessments (Chen, Tang and Feldmann). For economic sustainability assessment
Disclosure 201, 205 and 206 has been taken, for environmental assessment Disclosure 302,
304 and 307 is considered and for social sustainability assessment Disclosure 401, 406 and
413 is referred. Hence, using all different GRI standards the sustainability report has been
prepared for the Timberwell Company and the sustainability assessment is made.
Economic Sustainability
Climate Change
With the global change in the climate the warming effects has worsened and the
probability of bushfire has increased. Perceiving the hostile outcome of the bushfire the
Stanwell council has made amendments in the Local Environmental Plan (LEP) and rezoned
some parts in specific as bushfire prone in the district of Stanwell (Chan 2015). This
modification introduces new guidelines for developing new buildings in the bushfire prone-
zoned areas. The guidelines states that there should be larger gaps between land boundaries
and buildings and for construction retardant building material should be used. These

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guidelines shall increase the cost for Timberwell Company and the extra is estimated cost to
be $4 million. Thus, to comply with the amendments of the board of authorities of Stanwell
the Timberwell Company have been working closely with the council. To minimize
estimated extra cost that the company has to bear, a town planning firm has been engaged
externally such that the application of the development plan can be managed locally and
much more efficiently and, in less time, but the company is charging $50,000 for the services.
However, there is no exact measurement of the cost, which Timberwell will save by investing
in the external service. Hence, the climate change may bring financial instability for the
company projects in Stanwell.
Corruption
In a recent instance of complaint against the Timberwell Company regarding the
chargers of corruption for offering bribe to the official of the Stanwell Council for passing the
development applications in the Stanwell disrict. Thus, bribing government officials is public
corruption. In the instance of the corruption five employees of Timberwell and two
professional partners were involved and State Corruption Commission arrested all the five
employees and one external consultant for conducting corruption (Masters and Greycar
2016). Following the incident Timberwell made suspension of all the corrupt five employees
without compenstion, even before the judgement was done for the concerned crime.
Timberwell also exercised the termination of the partnership agreements with the two of the
external consultants who were engaged with the incidence of corruption. These anti-
corruption steps taken by the Timberwell Company will set example for others and reduce the
chances of future corruption possibilities.
Anti-Competitive Behaviour
Dennis an ex-employee of Timberwell Company complained against the company to
the government regarding its involvement in anti-competitive market behaviour (Alhassan

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and Biekpe 2017). Based on the complaint of Dennis Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission took steps and filed case against the company in the Federal Court (Pert, Chen
and Carvosso 2018). The allegation of anti-competitive behaviour on the Timberwell
Company states that when the company came to know about a new company making an entry
in the market, it threatened the contractors and the suppliers that it would stop taking
materials from them, if they provide service to the new company to deter entry of the new
company (Karaer and Erhun 2015). The case regarding this is still under proceeding in
Federal Court and the verdict is expected to come within four months. It is more likely that
the company will be fined heavily for this misconduct.
Environment Sustainability
Energy consumption
In a release made by social media it is given that the Timberwell Company is an
organization that uses energy efficiently and it is justified by a table that provides the detais
of energy use of the company. The table shared by the social media regarding the electricity
consumption is given below
Source of energy Unit of energy consumed
Fuel consumption using sources that are non-renewable 1.0 Gigajoule
Fuel consumption using sources that are renewable 0.5 Gigajoules
Consumption of electricity 2.0 Gigajoules
Total energy consumed by the organization 3.5 Gigajoules
The above table has been prepared with the use of recommended tools of the
Australian Department of Industry and Science (ADIS). It has been found from the media
release several programme have been implemented by Timberwell Company to diminish the
use of the non-renewable source of energy and increase the use of renewable source of
energy (Lee and Cheng 2016). It has a target to transfer 50% of the total fuel use dependency

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from non-renewable to renewable sources in the coming three years (Rahim et al. 2016).
Therefore, after three years it is expected that renewable sources will contribute to 75 percent
of the total fuel consumption.
Effect of activities on the environment
Timberwell Company has development site at Otford Park. The company has
exercised an assessment study to find that if there is any possibility of negative impact that
the development of the site entails to the environment. The Environmental Impact
Assessment found that the site has large population of wallum sedge frog. Thus, the company
worked on the situation to find out what suitable action can be taken such that both
development of the site and preservation of the frogs can be done simultaneously because the
projected moderately concentrated housing development of the Otford site possibly hamper
the habitat permanently which is harmful for survival of the frogs (Lemckert and Mahony
2018). Hence, Timberwell Company jointly worked with district of Stanwell and other
relevant environment organizations to formulate strategies such that the development plan of
the place is executed along with conservation of the concerned species of frog.
Environmental laws
A complaint was made against the Timberwell Company for adverse actions against
the environment to the Department of Environment and Energy (DEE). The company
removed 1.11 acre of grasslands that comes under the category of critically threatened
ecological community. This action of the concerned company is a violation of environmental
laws because it is unlawful to remove endangered natural habitat (Collins and Du Toit 2016).
Thus, it attracts a fine of $200,000 for the company. The removed grassland was an important
flora and fauna site as per State Planning Scheme and thus Timberwell has been asked to
execute a restoration plan to with a least expense of $440,000 (Mitchell et al. 2015). Hence,
the company causes huge cost on the environment leading to unsustainability.

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Social Sustainability
Employment
Timberwell Company has a total of 58 employees and al are male. The employees are
from the fields of profession and trades associated to construction. However, as seventeen
employees left the company and joined its competitors in the same region so it hired 12 more
apprentices that are new. Among the all the employees one is above the age of 50 years and
other are between 30 to 50 years. Experiencing the attrition of employees, the company has
introduced new policies under which salary is higher than before and there is an extra
monthly day off (Banerjee 2017). Thus, higher competition entails new policies that make
hiring employees a bit harder for the company.
Organizational discrimination
An instance of discrimination occurred in Timberwell Company that led to a
resignation of an employee named Dennis. Dennis filed a case in the Fair Work Commission
claiming that other workers were harassing him because only he was above the age of 50
years (Australian Human Rights Commission 2016). Other used to make fun of him by using
age related jokes and humiliated him. Consequently, Timberwell had to compensate Dennis
by payment of $4.400 and organized anti-discrimination training for the employees to ensure
no further discriminatory act occurs in the organization (Hebl et al. 2016). Timberwelll thus
fulfilled all the instructions given by the Fair Work Commission (FWC).
Local community development programmes
Timberwell Company has invested hugely in developing the local environment. All
the developmental activities were implemented in the residential development sites of the
company. The expenses were done mainly to perform assessment of the impact of the

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company activities, including local community in the development programme (Warner and
Sullivan 2017). The society development initiative of the company includes local resident
meeting, programmes of development of local community, Environmental impact assessment
(Benham and Hussey 2018). The entire programme of the company is based on the
requirement of the local public for social housing that is affordable.
Sustainability of the business in the long run is slightly confusing as there are
adversities in all the fields the company operates in. The market it operates in is full of
restrictions and attracts fines and the company needs to be cautious to avoid any adversities
that occurred to the company in the past as presented in the report. Hence, the actions that
company took supposed to help the company to remain economically sustainable. Similarly,
the company faced many issues in the field of environment such as fines for taking unlawful
actions. The company has to take care of other environmental regulations that increase the
cost burden of the company. Considering the regulations related to the environment, for a
construction company it is difficult to make sustain in the industry as far as environment is
concerned. Again, Timberwell has taken many organizational decisions to improve the work
culture in favour of the employees and developed many other policies to improve the local
community related the housing development sites.
Conclusion
From the above assessment of the sustainability of the Timberwell Construction
Company in the area on economy, environment and society, it is found that the company
sustain in all the fields except for environment as the industry it operates in has been facing
several challenges due to environmental laws. Hence, it is difficult for the company to sustain
environmentally. However, it has taken many measures and followed the instruction of the
government to reverse the harmful environmental effects it causes by developing residential
complexes in its developmental sites but as completely, the industry has negative impact on

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the environment as without destructing natural habitat developing new residential sites is
quite difficult. On the other hand, the difficulties the company faced in the economic and
social areas have been resolved by the company effectively and any pending case seems to be
resolved in future and no difficulty will sustain. Thus, economic and social sustainability for
the company is assured in the long run.

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References
Alhassan, A.L. and Biekpe, N., 2017. Liberalization outcomes and competitive behaviour in
an emerging insurance market. African Development Review, 29(2), pp.122-138.
Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016. Willing to work: national inquiry into
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Banerjee, A., 2017. A Study on the Factors Influencing the Rate of Attrition in IT Sector:
Based on Indian Scenario. TCS, 11, pp.10-9.
Benham, C.F. and Hussey, K.E., 2018. Mainstreaming deliberative principles in
Environmental Impact Assessment: current practice and future prospects in the Great Barrier
Reef, Australia. Environmental science & policy, 89, pp.176-183.
Chan, K., 2015. Don't forget the weather in the axing of the carbon tax in Australia. Carbon
Management, 6(1-2), pp.63-68.
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environmental management practices and company performance in Sweden, China and
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Collins, K. and Du Toit, J.T., 2016. Population status and distribution modelling of the
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Ecology, 54(2), pp.195-206.
Hebl, M., Barron, L., Cox, C.B. and Corrington, A.R., 2016. The efficacy of sexual
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Karaer, Ö. and Erhun, F., 2015. Quality and entry deterrence. European Journal of
Operational Research, 240(1), pp.292-303.

11SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT REPORT OF TIMBERWELL
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Lemckert, F. and Mahony, M., 2018. 7 The status of decline and conservation of frogs in
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