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Platform Chats
Platform Chats
Sustainability in the Railroad Industry
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In this first episode of the new year, host Walt Bleser chats with Dava Kaitala and Mark Coleman, two active Committee 13 – Environmental committee members about sustainability in the railroad industry. Dava Kaitala is the National Class 1 Rail Vice President for Jacobs and holds a JD from Texas Tech University. Mark Coleman is the Director of Advanced Energy at TRC and holds an MS in Environmental Management and Policy from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Together the trio discusses the differences and nuances between sustainability and environmentalism. As well as the importance of taking a cross- functional view of sustainability.
I think that if this symposium is going to be a true symposium by the definition you gave earlier, and it's going to help the membership of AREMA, I think that it's going to need people who are not Committee 13 members, who maybe aren't thinking of themselves as traditional environmental folks. Those folks really need to make their voices heard and let us know the really cool stuff that they're doing out there. Because when I was looking for doing the sustainability report at BNSF, one of the things that cracked me up were the number of really awesome things that we were doing throughout the system that I didn't know about. And they certainly didn't come about as ideas from environmental. They came about because people saw a problem and they figured out a cool way to fix it. So we would love to hear more about those for the symposium.
SPEAKER_01You may know them as the quote people behind the largest annual railroad conference in North America. In fact, you may not know about AREMA at all. This podcast is designed, no pun intended, to change your view of who AREMA is and how AREMA has changed the trajectory of many railway careers over its 100-plus year history. Welcome to Platform Chat with your host, Walt Letzer, where he takes a moment to discuss the impacts AREMA has had on the very people who are proud to be called members. Are you ready to roll with AREMA?
SPEAKER_02ARE Corporation is a proud supporter of AREMA and Platform Chats. If you are looking to take your Railway Structure's career to the next level, or simply start it down the right track, please visit us at ARECorp.com. Please see our brand new job postings on our careers page or on our LinkedIn page.
SPEAKER_04Hey everybody, and welcome back to yet another episode of Platform Chats. Not only another episode, we actually are on a completely new season of Aruma headquarters. It's insistent that we go on seasons and episodes. So we are on season three, episode one. For those of you that prefer sequential numbering, like myself, we're on episode 22. Believe it or not, I can't believe we've done 22 of these already in such a short period of time. But we uh kicked this thing off, I believe, in January of 21. Uh we interviewed uh the oldest, longest uh standing member of Arima, uh Mr. Ed Sparks, uh who was active in the Transcontinental Railroad. Uh he was active at Penn Central, uh Conrail, I think he's been involved in all of it. So we started with him uh and we are all the way into interesting things way beyond the stuff that he even understands. We are now in things like uh believe it or not, a environmental and uh sustainability and resiliency symposium uh podcast today. So uh I've got two really amazing guests on today, both representing committee 13, which is the environmental committee, which if you are an active listener, you remember we interviewed uh the chair and uh vice chair, I believe, at the time of the environmental committee in the spring of 21, I believe. Uh Kerry Harris was on that one. And it turned out that you know a lot of listeners enjoyed it. And I guess they they drove that membership numbers up a little bit. And we're hoping to do that again to to uh continue to fuel uh activity and uh just participation, I guess, in that committee. What's really interesting about this one um is the fact that the symposium that we're working towards, and for those of you that are like me and you heard symposium and you don't know what that means, um I looked it up. Don't worry. Um it's a collection, it's a conference or meeting to discuss a particular subject, a collection of essays or papers on a particular particular subject by a number of contributors, which I quite frankly is a perfect way to describe what we're working towards because this is not just gonna be a C13 thing, this is going to touch all the functional groups. So uh last December, which feels like forever ago, um we spoke with some representatives from the 13. And uh there's gonna be a big push in the year 23 to include uh because we are as inclusive as we can possibly be at Arima, uh all the functional groups in the symposium. Meaning, yeah, structures people, we're talking to you um and maintenance away, and PT, all of it. So what we're gonna try out here is I'd like to give an overview today in this podcast of what we're really aiming towards. So we're we're flying at 20,000 feet uh today. And the the two guests I have on are gonna do a great job with those topics. Trust me, they could if you if if you want these guys to uh land the plane, I bet they would on some of these subjects. Um and then we're gonna have kind of a series, a mini-series, if you will. Um I haven't said mini series probably since 1996. But uh yeah, a mini-series of uh of podcasts where we talk talking to the different functional groups to see how they can get involved. Again, the goal for these uh podcasts and and for all of you listeners out there is to um hey, if you hear something you like, you see something that gets you excited, uh gets you excited, reach out and let's get you plugged in. Just like we did in that last one about the Watford group. You know, I know some people reached out, they were excited about the international aspects of that. So something out there to tickle your fancy. That's the goal here. And uh without further ado, I'm gonna get to my two guests right now. Um I have uh Mark Coleman, who is the uh director of advanced energy at TRC, which is a consulting group, and I have Dava Keydla, who uh is my first ever uh jurist doctor uh who does not practice law uh on the podcast, who works for Jacobs as their National Class I um rail business leader and vice president, both of which are members of 13. Uh I know you're probably tired of hearing me talk, so we're gonna jump right into Mark. If you could give a brief introduction, uh we'd love to hear it.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much, Walt, and uh congratulations on more than 20 episodes and now entering you know season three. That's just awesome. It's great to be a part of the conversation. We we appreciate that from an Environmental Committee 13 perspective, and I think also from uh uh a background perspective here, which I'll delve into here. Um so as you noted, I'm a director of advanced energy uh and innovation uh at TRC. That's within our power sector. Um I'll spare you a whole advance around uh TRC, but uh we're working on decarbonization uh opportunities and solutions for industry, including um through the lens of sustainability and resilience, really working to help our clients and infrastructure um, you know, be preemptive and predictive about the future and uh really leverage data and information in a way that helps our infrastructure become um more sustainable, resilient in that in that fashion. I've been working in industry for over 20 years. Um, from a rail perspective, um, I'm relatively new to AREMA and certainly Environmental Committee 13 here in the past year or two. Um, but I'm truly excited to be a part of uh both AREMA as an organization, the industry at large, and the uh the environmental committee. I like to tell folks, um, I've actually been working in the rail industry for half a century. Um that if you looked at me, you wouldn't think that. Um but the reality is when I was uh when I was a baby, I used to have a small sweater at my mother used to dress me in that had a uh a choo-choo train on it, and it it gave me a nickname called Chooch from my uh babysitter that I had for a number of years while my mother went back to work. And uh that stuck with me my whole life. And so I like to think that's my first uh four forte, if you will, into the rail industry. And even though I didn't have any family members or worked in there formerly for uh many decades later, um, I fell in love with it as a child, I think, like a lot of kids do. It's a fascinating space, it's one with rich, rich history and heritage, and it's something that, quite frankly, is the mover of people, goods, and and the economy. Uh, so with that, there's a tremendous allure and uh interest, I think, in not only the history of rail, but where rail is going into the future. Um, fast forward, you know, I've been working um, you know, in the rail sector in particular for, you know, probably about 18 years. And my first entree into it was really from a perspective around management consulting and doing work um tied to environmental remediation, compliance, and environmental risk, working to understand you know, the liabilities and a lot of the um environmental hazards that were born out of not just the rail sector, but a lot of the right-of-way um uh companies and organizations that leveraged rail, your integrated oil and gas, your integrated chemical companies, your integrated manufacturing. And it's a it's an ecosystem unto itself as we know, and that as we've seen operate for um you know over a century uh domestically, let alone in other countries around the world. And through that lens, I began to understand, you know, some of the challenges that the industry faces, not only from a uh rail perspective, but also um across those other partners and um customers. And it it really gave me an intriguing point of view in terms of how we can help um prevent past mistakes and work collaboratively to uh try to create a better future. And fast forward, um, that gave me an entree into working in the sustainability space, um particularly at TRC and bringing some of those solutions forward. Um I'll also let you know, uh as it may interest the group at large, I work as an adjunct instructor teaching sustainable enterprise and managing sustainability at the undergraduate and graduate school level at Syracuse University. I've published three books on sustainability. Um, and uh and I also work uh you know with some uh non-for-profit organizations in this space as well.
SPEAKER_04Fantastic. All right, so we've got an author and we got a lawyer. All right, lawyer, you're up.
SPEAKER_00Oh well, well, I will say first of all, I think you might be the first person to get my name right the first time you tried. So congratulations. Um again, I'm Dave Akaidla. I'm the National Class One Rail vice president here at Jacobs. Um, and I came to Jacobs two years ago, actually, from BNF Railway. I was at BNF for 12 years, um, loved my time there. And uh one of the things that came up as we were talking earlier was how the heck does somebody who's a lawyer end up where you are now? Because it doesn't seem like a a supernatural fit or something that would be easy to follow. Um, so in a nutshell, uh out of law school, I went to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This has started dating me, but um uh 9-11 happened my last year of law school. And as a result, I was originally gonna go work for a big law firm after doing a just a judicial clerkship. Um, but then 9-11 happened, and like everybody else in the world, kind of the whole world changed. And so when I interviewed with the Corps of Engineers, they said they were cleaning up ground zero and rebuilding the Pentagon. And I said, like, well, how do you sign me up and can I sign up any faster? Um, so I went to work for the Corps. I was there for about six years. Um, while I was there, my mother-in-law started working at BNFF Railway as her third job after retirement because retirement did not stick well for her. Uh, she got bored very easily. She ended up in the law department at BNFF um three days a week helping them with their billing. And so I happened to go up there one day to have lunch with her when I was in town from DC. Uh, met a couple of people in the law department. They started laughing because they happened to have a big Clean Water Act case right then, and they said, we have a feeling we need somebody like you. A year later, they called again and told me that uh indeed they were looking to hire somebody who understood Clean Water Act permitting who could help them on the legal side. And so I started out in the law department, was there for 16 months when they asked me to go work in engineering, which terrified me. In fact, um I was really worried somebody had misread my resume and actually said to the vice president of engineering on the phone, I think there's been a terrible mistake. I came from the Corps of Engineers, but I'm not an engineer. Um, and then he said, you know what? I don't need you to be an engineer. I need you to lead engineers, and for whatever reason, my engineers listen to you. So for a couple of years, they let me wear uh uh steel-toed boots and a hard hat and lead bridge projects and really big track projects um and do really fun stuff. Like at one point, they uh I was working on the Galveston Bridge project, which is the major bridge that connects the the island of Galveston to the mainland. Um, and so I got to walk around on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico so that you know we could look at what was going on, grabbed the bucket and was passing fish up the wall so we could save the fish, which was fun. And let me tell you, when you're standing on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico and you look up at the at the walls that are holding the water back, you suddenly realize that you hope everybody checked their math really carefully. Um but in any event, uh part of what I loved about being in the rail industry was the fact that they give you really great opportunities to grow and do things that maybe don't feel super natural to you. Um and then by the end, when I left BNFF, I was the general director of planning, permitting, and sustainability. So I was running a couple of technical teams, running the environmental audit program, was only spending about 20% of my time as an actual lawyer. Um, and then so when Jacobs called and indicated they had a position open and they were hoping for somebody who understood the interplay between environmental and engineering, and they thought I would be a good fit, it seemed like a really good opportunity to move over.
SPEAKER_04So, so much to unpack out of both. I mean, I think I could probably just talk to both of you about your backgrounds for the next hour. We're not gonna do that, but okay, Galveston, I did hear that. So um, that's an interesting one because that's a vertical lift bridge, and I believe there used to be a Scherzer rolling lift bridge. And if I am thinking of the right bridge, that was the one that they packed up and shipped to Northern California, and it's still in service in Northern California today for Sonoma Marin area rapid transit.
SPEAKER_00That is a different bridge that's been Galveston Bridge is really interesting because um among the things that made it difficult is that the entire freshwater supply of the city of Galveston runs on a pipe that was hanging on the bottom of that bridge. We buried it, which is actually why we had to open up and and be able to dig there in the in the bottom. But no, it's a it's a fixed bridge. Uh but at the time it was the single most occluded bridge in the United States. So many boats were running into that thing. I'm surprised it was still standing.
SPEAKER_04Hmm. Okay. All right, we're thinking about different ones. There's definitely a vertical lift on the way into Galveston Island. I must be thinking of something else. But all right. Uh this is so cool, both having both of you here because you've your your backgrounds and uh Wow, I mean, the way both of you got to where you are is is interesting. Uh because you went on well, as everybody I've had on this podcast, uh the there is no there is no direct A to B. There is many ways to get from A to B. Um and so, you know, Mark, I'm gonna go right ahead and say that uh your your self-proclamation on on expertise in sustainability would make you a really good person to ask the question of what is sustainability?
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you, Walt. I and certainly I hope so. I'll do my best at it. And and you know, part of it, I think, is this is an evolving definition. There's a call a classic academic definition, and I'll give you that. It's you know, in many ways born out of the sustainable development movement and uh the United Nations, what was called the Bruntland Commission back in the late 80s, 1987 to be exact. And Bruntland was the last name of a woman uh who was uh put as chair of the committee by the United Nations to explore from the economic development perspective what does this look like if we're continuing to consume more of the Earth's precious and finite natural resources and with it and a growing population, aren't our uh needs and wants uh at odds with the Earth's capacity to take care of itself and and to enrich humanity? And what the commission found, Walt, was that uh that in fact was true, and there's been so much from the United Nations stemming forward, fast forward to today, what we call the sustainable development goals and the the principles by which the United Nations is putting out to the world to say, here are some things to factor in to consider, if you will, if you're a company, if you're a citizen, if you're a government, in terms of how we treat each other, how we treat the world, and how we can, in a sense, bring forward better quality of life. But that that classic definition was you know, development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And what you know, it how do we make that translation though into real-world pragmatic business um strategy and common sense for people who work in the rail industry or in the communities in which we live? And and let me just introduce for you a couple things. When I was going through graduate school, you know, 20 years ago, there was this idea that environment, economy, and society were these interlocking circles, if you will, each had equal merit, each had equal say in terms of how we think about a more sustainable future, not not um not hindering future generations to meet their needs. And actually, uh Dave's point about the the bridge is actually a really good practical example. You know, as we build infrastructure and we think through the concept and the need to uh deliver on a particular level of service or quality or technical specification and requirement for today to accomplish some goal, what does that mean five years out, ten years out, twenty years out? So when we think about climate impacts today, or we think about what that might mean for future generations to have a transportation corridor that's efficient and effective and resilient, how are we building that into the design construct of how we're bringing forth uh engineering principles in the here and now? So that's a very practical example that we can get into. But around those interlocking concepts, what we've begin to understand fast forward the past few decades is that these are not mutually exclusive. The reality is that to have a thriving society, let alone the opportunity for an economy that can sustain us in terms of quality of life, enriching humanity with uh you know therapeutic drugs or opportunity for clean energy or opportunity for job pathways that excite us or you know, entertainment and ways that we can enrich humanity, we need a vibrant and verdant environment, one that we know we live in a world of finite resources. So, how do we find a way that we can work not just in harmony with nature, but one that values nature as a common and mutual requirement for upstanding society and ultimately allowing us the opportunity to have an economy. Now, drill that down a little bit further from that 20,000-foot view. And again, what does this mean for the enterprise? When we think about sustainability, what I would offer you know, listeners thinking this through and trying to make sense of it and bring it into a real world scenario, think of it as a long-term viewpoint, and long-term can be in a business cycle. It doesn't have to be 50 or 100 years. I will say there are governments of the world uh that do think in those time horizons, and domestically, we tend to think more in a business cycle or a political cycle. But that said, sustainability tends to be a long-term intergenerational viewpoint. It's systems-based and holistic. So it thinks about all the integrated systems that tap into it. So rail is perfect about uh for talking about sustainability as a point of view because it's not just the linear pathway, it's all those connective tissue points that include your customers, your vendors, uh, your bridges, your tunnels, uh, your locomotives, your switch yards, your intermodal terminals, and all the way through the value chain to um, you know, shipping and and and um barge and and other connection points with manufacturers and supplies. So when we think about the system, it's not just the railway at large, that is the beating heart, but it's these other elements that also um are feeders and uh and consumers from that system. And with that, it requires just like David gave. Third background and myself as well. I think where you see practitioners leaning in right now is this transdisciplinary perspective. The idea that not any one of us, from a subject matter perspective, have all the answers. For us to begin addressing these long-term systemic holistic needs, we need to be thinking about how we bring disciplines together to solve challenges in a more comprehensive way because there's so many converging drivers and issues that are impacting sustainability right now. We can think about climate, we can think about waste, we can think about water quality, we can think about ecosystem services and damages, we can think about how we optimize for revenue within the railway around efficiency and digitization as opportunities around those things. And they all require an integrated intellect, if you will, across different disciplines to help make that work. And so this really presents a lens, if you will, by which the industry can think about the future in a more comprehensive way that reduces the risks at large that the industry works with every single day and really distills them into more practical ways that we can create value.
SPEAKER_04Okay. There's a lot to unpack there. And I really appreciate how you took that from 50,000 feet and you you started to bring it down to 20, 10, 15,000. So in our industry. So I uh the way you kind of unpacked that was really great, Mark. Um I feel like you might have spoken on this topic before. Uh uh, David. So anything you want to add to that, to what Mark said first and foremost. And second, uh, there was a question I had. What is the difference between sustainability and environmentalism?
SPEAKER_00Like when I think of that's one of my favorite topics. Yeah. So those two things are very different. So um environmentalism is only considering one leg of a stool. Environmentalism really is what is the single best way to do this thing for the environment? When you look at sustainability, you really do have to look at all three legs. So you have to consider the easy way to remember it people, planet, profit. Um, so you need to look at uh environment is of course important. We're not saying that it's not, we're not discounting that at all, but you also have to look at the economics of the thing, um, and you have to look at the impact on society. So, for example, if you weigh environment too heavily, um, and you said, for instance, we're tomorrow, we're just not going to use any diesel ever again because of carbon concerns, well, you're going to put a whole lot of people out of jobs. You're going to have a whole lot of farmers who can't get food to market. Um, you're going to have people who are starving because we can't get food to port so that they can, you know, American goods can, American food goods uh can get to countries that can't grow their own. Um, so it's not a sustainable outcome. While from an environmental standpoint, perhaps it's uh, you know, quote unquote, the best thing. It's not the sustainable thing. It's not good for society as a whole, even though it could be good for the environment if you're just looking at it through a carbon lens. Um, so I really like the idea of sustainability because it is a balanced approach and it does take a whole lot of things into consideration so that you can come out with pragmatic outcomes. I love that Mark used that word because I think pragmatism is the most important thing when you look at sustainability. I will also say um if sustainability is only living in the environmental department, or for Arima only living in committee 13, we're doing it wrong. Um, it really has to be cross-functional. And if it's not, it's never really gonna go anywhere. It's always truly just gonna be environmentalism.
SPEAKER_04Interesting. Okay, so the the going back uh again, this is not my bellwether. Um, so the environmentalism is one leg of the stool. I also heard people, planet, profit. Is that similar to the to the the I I was also picturing Mark's Venn diagram?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Uh it's those same three things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Okay, got it, got it. And so so environmentalism, it's not that it's it's not bad, it's just it's not the same thing. Sustainability is what I'm hearing is a is a bigger overarching. It is. Uh I think they oftentimes get entertain intertwined or interchanged in common water cooler talk? Is that a nice way of saying it?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04Yes. Okay. Okay. So all right, let's let's take that. All right, can we put a put a little bit of a pin on sustainability and move into the next word of the day? Resiliency. Uh, who wants to take that on?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I can I can start with resilience. Um, so what's really um fun is sustainability and resilience are like looking at each other in the mirror. Um, if you think about it, sustainability in a lot of ways is considering the impact you or your company is having on the environment. Resilience is looking at the impact that the environment is having on you and how you respond to it. So, for example, um, one of my uh my favorite things to work on is are projects that are around engineered green infrastructure. So, engineered green infrastructure is a way of designing with the uh environment in mind so that you're using nature as your friend, which then allows you to recover more quickly from all kinds of issues. So, for example, if you have flooding, if you've built a resilient system, um, you're going to have an easier time getting your tracks back in service. Uh, you're less likely to have tracks go out of service in the first place. Um this is uh one of my favorite Trent Hudak stories, Trent, who of course is the current president of a REMA. When I was working at BNSF, I got really excited because um I had been working with some folks who were um looking at meandering streams. So they were taking old streams and which had been channelized. So water was shooting straight as opposed to how uh nature wants it to go, which is in this very like serpentine way. Um they had been meandering these streams and then they had been putting plants in the middle of streams so that it would slow water down so that it wasn't having an impact on the banks, which was helping um uh helping tracks not be uh blown out when a whole lot of water would come through really quickly. So I'm telling Trent about this, and I'm feeling super smart and like, you know, we're gonna have this, I'm gonna have this great idea. And he starts laughing and says, We've been doing that for like 20 years, Davis. And I said, Trent, you didn't know it, but like you're building this resilient railroad. This is resilience. This is green infrastructure. He was like, Yeah, if you just know what kind of plants you plant out there, it can slow the water down a whole lot. And then you don't have nearly as many problems. Um so resilience and the idea of building a resilient railroad is nothing new to the rail industry. It's just something that we've never really thought about. I used to do a slide where I looked at resilience and talked about engineer green infrastructure, and I said, there are a whole lot of names for this, but the best name for it is smart railroading. Um, because that's really what it is. It's the ability to get the railroad back in service after any sort of problem.
SPEAKER_04Interesting. Okay, that's a that is a great story. And um thank you for thanks for bringing Trent into the conversation. That's uh very timely given that you are right. This is his year as president. So uh, Mark, take this one and run however you wish. Um the other piece I'm thinking about too is and maybe I have this right or wrong, is it's resiliency also thinking just about how to build where the environment complements what we're doing versus us using it as a challenge. I I don't know how to say that. It seems like we're trying to, instead of just overcoming it, we're trying to live with it.
SPEAKER_03I that's a great question. And I I love Dava's uh point with regards to um the rail industry has been doing this a long time and that this is really smart railroading. I do want to just echo back that because in my journey here in the past 18 months, being more immersed in the in the in the rail sector more than I ever have in my career, uh kind of running the circuit, if you will, on different uh conferences and meeting so many great people in the industry, um, that has been the prevailing point. I like to say that those of us in the sustainability and resilience and ESG uh areas have really done ourselves a disservice over the past 20 years as a point of opinion. I think we've created a nomenclature and a abstraction of something that's always been there. It's been very accessible. We've just added fancy language and words to things that people have been doing all along. And it's really just common sense and really smart business at the end of the day. There are things, though, like you said here, um, Walt, that I do think are beginning to evolve a little bit um further, however. I think when we think of resilience, it is about shoring up and taking that mirror uh image of what's happening on the environment and internalizing it into some practical things to make sure that everyone's operational, safe, secure, and um you know, on time. Uh, but we also want to be pre um preemptive, predictive, proactive in our posture towards resilience, meaning there are unknowns uh and uh and known unknowns and really unknown unknowns that we need to address. And what I mean is when we think about climate risk and all that we've seen, whether it's natural disasters, um, you know, wildfires, whether it's um severe weather patterns, um, whether it's man-made uh or uh acts of God, so to speak, there are things that as we look into the future, we can build resilience so far, but we also have to create an infrastructure that's agile and adaptive in its resilient posture, meaning it's learning. It has a capacity to uh be um resilient through the ability for humans and the infrastructure to quickly adapt to change if needed. Now, how do you do that in a uh industry that is um you know um very tangible in terms of uh you know what it does? Um, you know, that's part of the challenge. And I think that's a lot of the questions that we're seeing come to life through a lot of work groups right now and committees. Um they're they're just dealing with the facts and contending with the realities of how do we build bridges that can be uh fire resistant? Um how do we uh have rights of way that are accommodating the needs of ecology, but also making sure that they're efficient and and can long-term uh weather kind of climate risks that might uh butt up against them. Uh so I I think to just round out that area in particular, it's about addressing it uh through those um opportunities to try to predict the future and build that into the business case as well.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so the last that that's a good way of bringing that back to this individual committees, and I'm so glad you did that because that that's kind of where we're gonna put a bow on this conversation. Uh but before we do that, you dropped the term ESG twice now, and I don't know what that means. So uh if you could just expand on that.
SPEAKER_03Happy to. Um, and here's another um, you know, not to add complexity to sustainability and resilience, but I think a lot of folks uh listening probably have heard at least the the acronym ESG and probably also scratching their heads, what the heck is that? What does that mean? We've heard it from our chief sustainability officer, maybe our corporate board, maybe our CEO. We have an external ESG or sustainability report. I'm hearing it on Bloomberg. It really was born out of a financial investment uh perspective to really round out environment, social, and governance as an indicator for assessing corporate and business risk around those factors. So, really, the the marketplace in terms of looking at corporate action around environment, social, and governance was born out of this need to understand how are companies preparing themselves for environmental risks like climate? How are they looking at the needs of society on the social lens? What are the what type of work are they doing in their communities? Are they potentially addressing equity concerns or issues, environmental justice? How is the governance element of their organization structured? Uh, do they do they uh address sustainability factors from a board level? And how does that trickle down through the organization throughout the industry uh by way of um you know operations and management structures and committees, et cetera? And so ESG was really a lens from the investment world to begin looking at different companies and saying which ones have a higher risk profile, which ones have a lower risk profile. The presumption here uh Walt has always been that those that can reduce their ESG risk are sound investments. And and that premise is still playing out in the marketplace, quite frankly. Um, but that said, uh, it's important to note that it is born out of that financial risk area, but it really has also become a nomenclature that is all assuming um around sustainability for some organizations. And that's that's unfortunate because it really, its intention and its purpose is really meant more as a corporate reporting opportunity for external audiences than it is for really managing sustainability for the for the operation.
SPEAKER_00So if I can say, why the heck would engineers, the railroad engineers, care about ESG? And it's for two reasons. Number one is um part of the the way that railroads, part of the selling point for railroads is the fact that moving things by rail ends up in a whole lot of companies' ESG reports. It's how they themselves are um limiting their carbon impacts, it's that they're moving their things, they're moving their cars, they're moving their products by rail. So it's the way that railroads get business. But the other thing is, um as you start looking at the reporting requirements, it's how capital decisions end up getting made by the railroads themselves, because the railroads themselves, in time, as they're doing these ESG reports, part of that governance piece says, how are you putting, how are you dealing with these risks? If the risks are there, how are you making your railroad more resilient and more sustainable? Um, and so when it comes down to it, capital projects for in a very real way in time will probably be decided um by those things that are going to uh improve their resilience scores.
SPEAKER_04Excellent way to bring this whole thing back together. Okay, and that also explains why anyone who's a member of Arima, who's a part of uh helping to create, maintain, uh, engineer, etc. the railway, everyone's got a hand in it, is what I'm hearing. Yeah? Um okay, so then let's close this thing out on uh this this upcoming symposium uh that that you guys are putting together. That's good. Now again, this is I talked to Mark earlier. This is a 2024 thing. So we're we're looking a year out, which that's believe it or not, that's gonna be here before we know it. Um this is an opportunity really for anyone in in Arima, anyone in the industry, right, to put together a paper or uh a presentation, right, on on something that they've they could very similar to what you just talked about earlier with your story with Trent, um, on how they are building a greener, more sustainable, more resilient railroad. Is that is that correct?
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I think that if this symposium is going to be um a true symposium by the definition you gave earlier, um, and is going to help the membership of AREMA, I think that it's going to need um people who are not Committee 13 members, um, who maybe aren't thinking of themselves as traditional environmental folks. Those folks really need to make their voices heard and let us know the really cool stuff that they're doing out there. Um, because when I was looking for doing the sustainability report at BNSF, one of the things that cracked me up were the number of really awesome things that we were doing throughout the system that I didn't know about. And they certainly didn't come about as ideas from environmental. They came about because people saw a problem and they figured out a cool way to fix it. So we would love to hear more about those for the symposium.
SPEAKER_04Perfect. I think that is a that is a great that is the key point we're trying to make. And then and then we're gonna run with this. Um the hope to run with this in the next several podcasts is is potentially speaking with different uh functional group members to see ideas, right? To get people's uh juices flowing around those presentations. Mark, I'm gonna give you the last word.
SPEAKER_03Well, all I can say is, you know, thank you and and David as well. I think uh this has been a terrific conversation. I think the intent here is to stimulate uh the subject matter and initiate it within the arena membership, and uh we hope that we've uh begun to do so. And I I think as you put forth in the beginning of the session, uh many more to follow. So we we look forward to folks' uh topics, ideas, questions. I think you know share them with Walt, and uh we certainly welcome the opportunity to come back and uh uh continue the conversation. Actually, I'm glad you said that.
SPEAKER_04As we move forward uh and people start coming up with ideas and whatnot, will this be uh a C13 uh that who's gathering the whole thing? Is it gonna be Kerry or uh if someone was to reach out through the AREMA website, they would try to reach out to Committee 13, is that right?
SPEAKER_00I think it is Kerry, yes.
SPEAKER_04Okay, okay, cool. And and we'll hear more about this as as we proceed in time here. It's only in January. Um so there'll be more to come. Okay, thank you both. This has been another great podcast. I really appreciate both of you taking time out of your uh busy schedules to sit down with me and uh talk all things sustainability, resiliency, and ESG. So with that, uh thank you both. And uh we'll see you guys hopefully sometime soon.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_04Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for rolling with AREMA on today's episode of Platform Chat. And for further information about AREMA, please visit arema.org or contact us at info at arema.org.
