While sustainability and efficiency have become well-established prerogatives in the national conversation about energy and climate change, nothing drives action like a prestigious award.


In the building industry, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards have helped call attention to the need to design more energy- efficient buildings. Receiving a LEED award is a badge of honor for any building owner or designer.


Now the field of civil engineering has its own set of standards, which is bestowing a similar distinction on transportation, water and other types of infrastructure projects.


The Envision rating system provides 
a framework for evaluating and rating 
the community, environmental and economic benefits of projects. It evaluates, grades and gives recognition based on various sustainability indicators over a project’s lifecycle.


The rating system is the product of a joint collaboration between the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure (ISI). The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the American Public Works Association (APWA), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) founded ISI. The collaborative introduced Envision in 2011.


According to its founders, infrastructure owners, design teams, community groups, environmental organizations, constructors, regulators and policy-­makers can use the Envision standards. These standards can help the project meet a number of objectives, including sustainability goals, raising public awareness of the importance of sustainability, proper investment of scarce resources and addressing community priorities in civil infrastructure projects.


Envision has a checklist to help users examine various sustainability aspects of the project’s design. Trained Envision Sustainability Professionals (ENV SP) will work with the project team to help them achieve higher levels of sustainability. A project will be evaluated on 60 sustainability criteria, or “credits,” which assess the sustainability of a project broken down into five categories, including quality of life, leadership, resources allocation, natural world, and climate and risk. Projects scoring high on these assessments will receive an Envision award.


A number of projects have received Envision awards in the few years since its inception, including a wetlands park in South Los Angeles and a stream restoration project in Placer County, Calif. According to Envision’s website, the rating system is also being employed in the design of a new suburb of 600,000 people in Karachi, Pakistan.