Client: Vancouver Board of Education
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Timeline: January – May 2014

Project Overview
The VBE’s goal is to be the greenest school board in North America. To establish a direction towards this goal, SSG was engaged to perform an audit of VBE’s current sustainability policy and action efforts, and to make recommendations on refreshing VBE’s approach to sustainability across the school board. SSG interviewed and held workshops with dozens of VBE students and employees, including Directors, operations staff, administration staff, teachers and support staff. We studied other North American, European and Australian school boards to determine best practices in other jurisdictions and to compare VBE’s exisiting efforts against those of its peers. A sustainability indicator framework was developed to track VBE’s progress in achieving its goal. SSG made eleven recommendations for the Board to take forward, ranging from management policies to technical tools. Recognizing the VBE’s financial and resource constraints, the recommended actions are realistic and incremental while maintaining ambition.