SUSTAINABILITY: Enhanced application of durable business principles

In an increasingly uncertain global economic environment characterized by an intensified competition and dwindling financial flows aimed at risky areas, severely affected by the recession, the companies in the construction sector have enhanced the application of sustainability principles in order to demonstrate that they are concerned about the welfare of future generations. Many managers believe that this is the only way through which they can boost their businesses on short, medium and long term, including here the attraction of finances from investment funds, which are more and more concerned with the guarantees they could obtain from collaborating with multinational holdings. Today - more than ever – the economic operators in the construction industry are concerned about the sustainability indicators that have multiple impacts (social, economic and environmental). In this respect, notable results have been pointed out lately. A unitary theory, which has been applied very successfully in practice, states that, regardless of the current economic conditions, the construction companies are able to optimize their activity through the monitorization of the entire operational cycle (Life Cycle Assessment - LCA), starting with processing basic raw materials and ending with the recycling process. Transparency is paramount in what concerns the communication of any measures taken to improve the operational activity, given that the so-called "sustainable development " is also a concept that allows both the improvement of the quality of life and the mending of social, economic and environmental conditions for present and future generations and this aspect needs to be perceived as such by stakeholders. It must be said that, because large multinational construction groups interfere with many individuals, entities, organizations and so on, their efforts to meet the requirements of the present without compromising the posibility of future generations to express their own requirements are not negligible. Sustainability is, in fact, the great challenge of the twenty-first century.