Searching for sustainability inside project management processes: a case study of nuclear power plant project construction

Today, more than ever, achieving a sustainable development of a business and of innovation projects is one of the key issues and one of the most challenging objectives for companies. Project Management activities are no exception. For the purpose of this paper, we are going to present findings and conclusions from an interview made with a project manager engaged in an important nuclear power plant project construction, which is actually on-going. The interview is based on a conceptual framework previously developed by investigating the literature. The results show that nuclear power plant projects have a strong relation with sustainability principles due to the project features: many stakeholders on different levels, special materials, very extended lifecycle both for project process and project’s product. Nevertheless, there are some limits for complete integration of sustainability principles. In fact, analysing the interview deeply, the answers are almost always related to regulations and in very few cases they express a natural approach committed to sustainability. Future research should, therefore, be devoted to testing and enriching the developed framework through exploratory research involving in-depth case studies and interviews with industry experts.