Sustainability
Report
2019

This report has been prepared in accordance with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards: Core option, ensuring it presents a full and balanced picture of Downer’s material topics and related impacts, as well as how these impacts are managed.

Reporting in accordance with the GRI Standards provides investors the ability to benchmark with comparable information relating to environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance.

Our approach is guided by the GRI’s principles for informing report content: materiality, completeness, sustainability context and stakeholder inclusiveness. A key focus of this report is to demonstrate how we deliver sustainable returns while managing risk and being responsible in how we operate.

We engage with our internal and external stakeholders to ensure we understand, and report on, our sustainability risks and opportunities. This year, we undertook a comprehensive independent materiality assessment to ensure our sustainability performance and reporting continues to align with the priorities of our stakeholders.

Downer has engaged KPMG to provide limited assurance over selected sustainability indicators to assess whether they have been prepared in accordance with Downer’s policies and procedures, and the GRI Standards for Defining Report Content and Quality.

These selected sustainability indicators are:

• Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates and Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rates
• Total direct (Scope 1) and indirect (Scope 2) GHG emissions
• Total energy consumption and production
• Significant environmental incidents
• The total number and value of safety and environmentally related fines or successful prosecutions.

Downer is committed to reporting our sustainability performance annually and consistently improving our data and information collection processes to ensure better quality data and insights.

Downer proactively participates in investor surveys and uses these insights to inform our understanding and improve our sustainability performance.

To Downer, sustainability is delivering financial growth and value to our customers through our supply chain, looking after the wellbeing of our people, having a diverse and inclusive workforce, minimising our impact on the environment and enhancing the liveability of the communities in which we operate.

Our commitments to sustainability are outlined in our policies, which are accessible from the Downer website.

A core element of Downer’s sustainability strategy is to focus on our customers’ success. If our customers are successful, we will be successful. Our core operating philosophy, ‘relationships creating success’, encapsulates this theme. Over the past few years we have strengthened our brand, and will continue doing so to ensure our customers have a stronger understanding of the extraordinary range of services we offer across the Group.

Downer’s business strategy focuses on Zero Harm, driving improvement in the existing business, investing in growth, and creating new positions. Downer’s strategic objectives, prospects, and the risks that could adversely affect the achievement of these objectives, are set out in the 2019 Annual Report. The strategic objectives are to:

• Maintain focus on Zero Harm
• Embed asset management and data analytics utilisation across the Group
• Improve engagement with customers
• Embed operational technology into core service offerings.

These objectives are largely shaped by a range of emerging trends that will present major opportunities for further growth across Australia and New Zealand in the future. Downer also considers feedback obtained from ongoing communication with stakeholders through initiatives such as the materiality assessment conducted this year.

The first trend is increasing urbanisation – which is linked to the second trend, growing population.

It is predicted there will be 30 million people living in Australia’s four major cities by 2040. In New Zealand, 60 per cent of the country’s growth is in Auckland. Meeting the requirements of this population growth will require considerable investment in our urban centres – and this investment is expected to continue for many years.

Downer operates in sectors that are closely connected to the investment that is being driven by urbanisation and population growth. These sectors include roads, rail, light rail, other public transport, utilities and telecommunications, along with health, education, defence and other government sectors. More schools and hospitals will have to be built to meet the demands of our growing population.

The proliferation of technology will also play an increasingly important role in delivering these services. At Downer, we identify appropriate areas to focus on in this complex space, and we are at the forefront in many areas – like the huge amount of data that is produced by Sydney’s Waratah trains which we delivered and maintain. This data provides invaluable information that helps us to maintain the trains more efficiently by enabling us to predict when an issue might arise so we can deal with it proactively.

There is no doubt that increasing urbanisation, population growth and the proliferation of technology will result in continued investment in infrastructure in the years and decades ahead.

Downer’s strategic objectives for sustainable growth have us well positioned to take advantage of these opportunities and meet the needs of a growing society.

Deeper trends and emerging issues that have the potential to impact Downer’s sustainability are also referenced in relevant sections throughout this document.

We are proud of the role we play in creating more sustainable cities and improving the quality of life in Australia and New Zealand. We do this while managing the impacts of our activities on the environment and communities in which we operate, and working collaboratively with our supply chain. We understand that our ability to do this is fundamental to our long-term success. This is why our passionate Zero Harm culture, refined project management processes and collaborative approach help us deliver services while maintaining our primary focus of Zero Harm.