Mainly, the report entitled State of the World 2012 emphasizes the nature of decisions

made by project teams, their impacts and some of the dimensions of sustainability that influence
decision-makers. This includes risk, resilience and opportunity. To cope with the sustainability
difficulties, there are also sustainability tools included in the article, like Rating & Certification
Tools, Decision-Support Tools, Calculators and Guidelines, which use motivators of risk
minimization, resilience, opportunity, competition, security and prosperity to guide project teams
towards sustainable infrastructure assets and services.
In the article, it was indicated that in building infrastructure projects, we face economic
crises, global urbanization, non-renewable resource depletion, water scarcity, climate change,
waste management and increasingly complex disasters, which threaten the resilience of critical
infrastructure and services globally. Some methods discussed in to tackle this situation is to make
infrastructure projects which relies less on non-renewable resources but still improve its
durability and sustainability performance, which will continue to sustain the needs of the future
generations.
In relation to the ongoing infrastructure projects in Metro Manila, there are cases which
companies want to meet the demands of peoples needs though they dont consider sustainability,
which is needed to ensures that risks to infrastructure assets and services are predicted early and
mitigated against.. Some example are the malls located in Divisoria. Important factors in
sustainability that they didnt consider are decision-making, risk resilience, opportunity. In result,
the infrastructure collapsed. Not only does this violate the factors in sustainability but it also
affected the company in their profit and capital expenditure. Though, they wanted to deliver the
final product as quickly as possible, they must consider it that they are taking a risk as well as an
opportunity. Infrastructure projects are supposed to be lifetime, efficiently and reliably, and it
needs to be adaptable and resilient to change and shock.
In provincial areas, there are less infrastructure projects made, which really is enough to
sustain the economys needs. Compared to urban areas, rural areas offer more selection of sites in
building infrastructures. This factor falls under decision-making which indicates that they can
easily decide where to build infrastructures, considering that there are less people to deal with in
that area. However, they might interact with some climatic and extreme weather uncertainties,
resource scarcity and material criticality. Also, as discussed in the article, sensitivity to the
interests of society, economy and the environment implies that sustainability approaches attempt
to nurture these connections and ensure they are elastic, adaptable and resilient. According to the
guidelines, geographical and sectorial relevance; quality of indicator sets; validity and
traceability of information must be considered.
In building more complex infrastructures, whether on rural or urban areas, there are
certain difficulties to be faced like political and economic uncertainties, human intervention, and
material and system performance. The main barrier to sustainable infrastructure is that
sustainability being considered at a minimum and this increases the service risk felt by owners

and operators. Moreover, lack of detailed information, not considering hazards and resource
scarcity will result to failure in conforming to sustainability in the said infrastructure. At the
same time, the article provides sustainability tools to help engineers and companies along the
way. These reduces the risk perceived by project teams of adopting sustainability during project
development. Some of these tools are Rating & Certification Tools that contains guidelines
offered to applying projects; intensity of evidence collection required; timing and risk
management; and credibility; Decision Support Tools that offers information about relevance,
ability to provide relevant and adequate sustainability input during critical decision-making
points in the project development process; quality of guidance, materiality and baseline
assessment at initial stages in the project; quality of input to the design process; ability to ensure
sustainable construction; Calculators which provides quantitative and qualitative information in
the form that is required.
Overall, in my opinion, the article was very helpful in guiding engineers and companies
in what must be taken into consideration when building infrastructure projects, such as dealing
with sustainability. People can apply sustainability as simply as reducing maintenance cost,
resource security, local resource usage, reduce consumption, identification of synergies for
greater efficiencies, lessened disruptions, utilization of innovative technologies offering a
competitive advantage and increased resilience to environmental, economic, social and political
shocks. Thus, sustainability is prioritized from the outset, decision-makers are already very
limited at later stages in making choices that will have a profound effect on the sustainability of
the project. As an engineer, a safety and environmental at that, the article also tackles things such
as ensuring the safety of the nature but also ensuring that the needs of people are rendered. It also
showed techniques on how to cope with the demands of the community. It all goes down to
sustainable development as a way to express societys demand for all aspects of decisions to be
taken into account. It is a modern expression of the ambition to act responsibly, fairly,
effectively, efficiently, sensitively, and with a view to the long term.