Academic Offences and Bad Academic Practices:
These include plagiarism, cheating, collusion, copying work and reuse of your own work, poor
referencing or the passing off of somebody else’s ideas as your own. If you are in any doubt about
what constitutes an academic offence or bad academic practice you must check with your tutor.
Further information and details of how DSU can support you, if needed, is available at:
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/dmu-students/the-student-gateway/academic-support-office/academicoffences.aspx and
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/dmu-students/the-student-gateway/academic-support-office/bad-academicpractice.aspx
Assignment Brief
As a Consultant, you have been asked to help a company with understanding how they can assess
their ongoing impact on the environment. The company are keen to improve their sustainable image
and hope this will be reflected in increased sales along with attracting more customers.
In order to help them you have been asked to look at the following topics and give them some
guidance on what is involved:
1. What is the definition of sustainability when viewed from an industry stance?
What is sustainability
What are the ‘Pillars’ and what do they each mean
Use a diagram to illustrate your answer
Explain why sustainability is important to industry
2. Identify the KEY Steps you would need to undertake when conducting your baseline
sustainability audit and the areas for consideration.
Briefly explain why a baseline audit is required.
Clearly identify the various resources that should be covered in your audit
Consider both internal and external resources.
Outline what actions are required by each of your chosen steps
Produce a flow diagram which can be used as a route map of the process for others
to follow.
3. For each resource identified, highlight what information is required to assess the quantity
used, potential emissions and costs.
Location of information if available
How you would obtain some data if none was readily available
i. Specific sections of the company
ii. Specific machines or processes
4. Explain how you would analyse the data obtained during the audit to highlight areas of
opportunity for improvement.
Outline potential types of data
Briefly explain the methods you would use to show which areas could be targeted for
improvement.
Use some simple examples of data analysis to show your chosen techniques
5. Develop a plan for the company which would help them understand the sequence of
performing a sustainability audit and implementing recommendations.
Think about the sequence of doing an audit from the company viewpoint
Produce a Gantt chart or project plan to help visualise how the process may be
undertaken.
Identify the tasks and associated times. An estimate is sufficient to illustrate your
thinking.
6. Explain to the company how you would embed a sustainability culture within the company to
establish the long term benefits.
Identify areas that would help the company
Consider how to involve external suppliers
Think about people, product and future
Please include in your report sections 1 – 6 as shown above. You may add a brief introduction and
concluding remarks.
The assignment should be in the order 15 pages in length (18 pages maximum) including the
necessary illustrations, references and any appendices. You should structure your report in a fashion
that allows for easy reading and brings out the main points suitable for the Company Board of
Directors to assess. The use of short paragraphs and bullet points is encouraged.
You should reference any material used within your report.
Explain any figures you include. You should use a font of size no less than 10 points.
Reference Material
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/business-sustainability
https://www.2degreesnetwork.com/groups/2degrees-community/resources/top-5-benefitssustainability-audit/
Additional information on Blackboard
You are expected to supplement these items by conducting your own research.
Deliverables to be submitted for assessment: 1 assessment
How the work will be marked:
Assessment will be based on the extent to which the learning outcomes listed above have been met,
and the extent to which the above instructions, notes and guidance are complied with (for example
regarding word limit, style, structure, referencing and citation, etc.).
To achieve a marginal pass of 50% to 54%: you should select appropriate documents and
use these to address the assignment; demonstrate a grasp of the material sufficient to enable
a basic response to the task; demonstrate some ability to engage in critical appraisal;
demonstrate some appreciation of appropriate presentation, citation and logical structure.
To achieve a pass of 55% to 59%: you should produce a coherent response to the task
undertaken demonstrating a sound understanding of how the documents relate to the
sustainable development debate; demonstrate clear evidence of skills of critical appraisal;
demonstrate good appreciation of appropriate presentation, citation and logical structure, and
adhere to the notes and guidance provided with this assignment.
To achieve a good pass of 60% to 69%: you might, for example, select interesting documents
or an interesting mix of documents and demonstrate an ability to synthesise material and to
construct responses which reveal good skills of critical analysis and insight; also a very good
level of presentation, citation and logical structure, also careful and thoughtful adherence to
the notes and guidance provided with this assignment.
To achieve an excellent pass of 70% or greater you must demonstrate an authoritative
insight, critical analysis or synthesis of ideas in your critical appraisal of the selected
documents, demonstrate a very good level of presentation, citation and logical structure, and
carefully and thoughtfully meet the assignment requirements as described in this document.
Work failing to meet the above criteria will be awarded an outright fail of 44% or less. A
marginal fail of 45% to 49% may be awarded to work with sufficiently sound structure to
suggest that with further work it would be worthy of a pass.