Capital Planning and Investment

Key Objectives

In recognising the link between the health and well-being of Victorians and the health and well-being of the environment, the Department of Human Services is committed to minimising the environmental impacts associated with our operations to the greatest extent possible, and seeks to achieve continual improvement in the management of our environmental effects. It is DHS intention to integrate the concept of sustainable development into  business operations and to pursue a vision of sustainability to achieve a healthier world.Facilitating this process is the DHS Environmental Policy, which  commits DHS  to the following principles and practices.

•  Promote the principles and raise awareness of sustainability and wise environmental management.
• Provide leadership to the community and industry by demonstrating methods of delivering sustainable initiatives
• Work closely with our employees, contractors, suppliers, clients, and the community to develop and implement environmental initiatives.
• Provide environmentally sound places for the delivery of our services.
• Adopt a pollution prevention approach to all our activities.
• Operate in an environmentally sustainable manner by reducing waste through reducing demand for, reusing and recycling energy, water and other material resources.
• Consider environmental aspects in the purchase of products and services, and endeavour to ensure the suppliers also meet high standards of environmental performance.
• Comply with relevant Commonwealth and Victorian environment legislation, Occupational Health & Safety practices, and with the Victorian Government’s environmental policies and initiatives.
• Develop a monitoring program to assess our environmental performance and communicate our progress in achieving environmental management targets through annual reports distributed to stakeholders.This document is intended as a guide for the project team to plan and design sustainable capital works for the Department of Human Services (DHS).

Victorian Government

The Victorian Government promotes sustainable development and ESD as ensuring the economy, society and physical aspects of our environment develop in a balanced way.A range of government policies, initiatives and discussion papers, can be viewed on the Sustainability Victoria (SV) website www.sustainability.vic.gov.au

Context

The government and DHS develop health care, ESD, sustainable policies and practices in parallel with each other.  It is not intended that this guideline supersedes or replicates any information provided in other documents.  It is intended that this guideline outlines a process for the integration of ESD with the relevant tools provided in the appendices.

ESD Integration

The ESD guidelines are to facilitate greater integration of ESD principles during the planning, design and procurement process.