Sustainability

At DEME, it is our ambition to meaningfully contribute to sustainable solutions for the global environmental, societal, and economic challenges facing our world today. In addressing these major challenges, we continue to strive toward improving the sustainability of our own operations. This has led to us developing a two-dimensional strategy for sustainable performance in which we aim to “Explore” and to “Excel.” We believe this strategy will help us create sustainable value for our customers, DEME, and society as a whole.

• Explore sustainable business solutions
  By continuously challenging ourselves to enlarge our sustainable business portfolio.
• Excel in our operations
  By maintaining and further strengthening our sustainable performance in our daily operations.

Our strategy makes a clear distinction between material topics and relevant topics:

• Material topics: These are our top priorities that have the greatest impact on our performance and sustainability goals.
• Relevant topics: These are important for continuous improvement, although they have a lower strategic impact.

The split between material topics and relevant topics is guided by the double materiality assessment, which looks at how our activities impact the world and how environmental and societal changes affect our business. This two-way view helps us identify the most important topics and align them with our strategic goals.

You can explore how we are addressing sustainability by watching the video below or reading through our latest  Sustainability Report.

Our sustainability governance model focuses on two core elements:

1. TO EXPLORE SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS (CONTINUOUSLY CHALLENGE OURSELVES TO DEVELOP MORE SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS)

2. TO EXCEL IN OUR OPERATIONS (SUSTAINABLE PERFORMANCE IN OUR DAILY OPERATIONS)

There are five main layers within our governance structure: the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, Sustainability Board, Sustainability Team and Process Owners of the different Segments and supporting services.

Board of Directors

Specific sustainability topics related to safety and greenhouse gas emissions reduction are on the agenda at every meeting of the Board of Directors. The general progress of the implementation of the sustainability strategy is discussed once a year.

Executive Committee

Every year, the Executive Committee reviews and approves our sustainability programmes, along with the related objectives and targets.

Sustainability Board

The Sustainability Board ensures regular and consistent updates to the Executive Committee, CEO (both represented in the Sustainability Board) and Board of Directors. It provides guidance on both strategic and operational sustainability matters to ensure that decisions align with our values, sustainability strategy, and objectives. In 2024, the Sustainability Board met 7 times to evaluate the sustainability performance of our project portfolio, and the progress made towards our objectives from both a strategic and operational perspective.

Process Owners

Sustainability Ambassadors within the segments, Theme Leads within the supporting services and Tender Sustainability Single Point of Contacts (SPOCs) have been appointed to support the further implementation of the operational sustainability objectives, targets and measures across the organisation.