With the certification of Qatar Aviation Services, Qatar Airways Group added another first to its list of environmental performance achievements. Balaji Bindinganavile, QAG’s Manager, Corporate & Environment Affairs explains the group’s motivations.
How to...?
IEnvA Certification
Achievements
Balaji Bindinganavile
Manager, Corporate & Environment Affairs
The national airline of the state of Qatar, based in Doha, Qatar Airways has been recognized for its outstanding performance with multiple awards multiple times. It was the first airline in the Middle East to be certified to the highest level of IATA's Environmental Assessment (IEnvA) program, and become the first airline globally to be certified to the industry standard for the prevention of illegal wildlife trafficking in aviation, as an inaugral signatory to the Buckingham Palace Declaration in March 2016. Qatar Airways currently flies to over 170 destinations in Australia, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, North America, and South America.
When I joined the Qatar Airways Group in 2015, as Environment Manager, the airline already had a strong environmental commitment, as evidenced by its achievement and maintenance of the IATA Environmental Assessment (IEnvA) stage-1 certification. In 2016, the airline’s executive management committed to obtaining stage-2 certification, which requires an airline to demonstrate ongoing environmental performance improvement. My remit in this role was to manage the development, from the ground up, of the group’s Environmental Management System (EMS), as well as the strategy framework for all business units, the environmental policy, the governance system, and environmental sustainability reporting, and to ensure continuous improvement of the environmental management framework.
We could have chosen to pursue an ISO 14001 certification directly, and there was robust discussion at our organization on which way to go. Since ISO only provides the standard, the support of an outside consultant is always required, and that means working with companies that may know a lot about the standard but very little about our industry. Aviation is complex, and the IATA Environmental Assessment (IEnvA) is custom-made for our industry. It’s consulting and certification rolled into one, equal to ISO and, what’s more, it provides carriers with support from other airlines that have already gone through the processes and can share their experiences.
To start with, we concentrated on corporate activities and flight operations, what is termed the core scope. QAG is a big group, completely vertically integrated, with every service from ground handling and cargo, to catering, duty free, private jet travel, and more. It made sense to start cautiously and build from the core because, when you introduce a system that affects people’s way of working, they have to understand and appreciate why we are making these changes, in order to adopt them fully and permanently. Management want to see that there’s a structure in place and continuous improvement of management systems. Stakeholders, both internally and externally, have expectations of where we have to be and the benefits the changes should bring.
As we introduced the system, supported by IATA, people started to see the value of it, that it is a management system that’s integrated into standard business processes, and that it has both financial and public relations value. That was a win for us, and we started to get significant buy-in, which allowed us to start expanding the scope. The beauty of IEnvA is that it is a system that can be easily expanded, and so we have rolled it out across the group.
"Our subsidiary Qatar Aviation Services saw that environmental certification had value for customers, and that IEnvA was providing a certification built specifically for ground handling activities."
The decision to seek a specific certification for ground services, in addition to the coverage provided by the airline certification, came from the ground handling subsidiary, Qatar Aviation Services, itself. They saw that environmental certification had value for customers, and that IEnvA was providing a certification built specifically for ground handling activities. With their global expansion plans, it made sense for them to highlight their own practices with their own certification. However, we would not have pursued the ground handling certification if we had not seen the value the airline program demonstrated. It is not a one-and done certification. It is a complete program that enables continuous improvement and holds your organization accountable with the biennial renewal.
The EMS framework was already in place when it came to certifying our ground handling subsidiary. I had created a ‘community of practice’, with a few people at group level, responsible for updating existing and developing new standard operating procedures (SOP), subject matter experts (SME) in each business unit, and other SMEs integrating with the Safety and Quality departments. Additionally, our key people had already received the environmental management awareness training that IATA provides, and we already had trained IEnvA Internal Assessors in place. All employees must complete our internal awareness training available on our e-learning hub as a matter of course, so even employees who had joined since the previous assessment were equipped.
To enable the ground handling certification, we still needed key personnel to be trained in IEnvA. Twelve people received the training in the first three months, and then we were ready to go! IATA gives you about six to seven months’ notice before their independent assessment. In the meantime, we proceeded with the internal assessment and action plan, to ensure we met the standards expected for the certification, which
we obtained at the end of 2023.
"The fact that IEnvA is industry specific is enormously valuable. Assessors have hands-on industry experience and provide a second set of eyes."
The fact that IEnvA is industry specific is enormously valuable. The assessors have hands-on industry experience and provide a second set of eyes, spotting things you might not see. For example, we had a control put in place for all aircraft, and the assessor noticed that we had only mentioned one type of aircraft in a particular procedure. We have 25 to 30 environmental risk registers, so that comment meant he had meticulously go through every one, and it showed us how important it is to be very specific.
Commercially, it’s hard to say whether a customer chooses us because of IEnvA. However, customer evaluation questionnaires ask whether we have an environmental management system in place, which is a good indicator that it makes a difference to them. We’ve also achieved zero waste to landfill from cargo, and zero wastewater discharge from our hub operations in Doha, and we are on track to meet our overall zero waste to landfill from our hub operations by 2030.
One of the things we’re very proud of is our commitment to wildlife. IEnvA has a specific wildlife module, in collaboration with United for Wildlife, the organization created by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in 2013 to protect endangered species from the illegal wildlife trade, and we’re now the official airline partner of United for Wildlife.
So those are the benefits that come from doing the work that the standards require you to do. Putting into place your internal processes and systems results in external recognition by various parties, but it’s hard to know how that translates monetarily or into an increase in customer base. In the end, Qatar Airways Group has become certified across all its services because it believes in continuously working towards environmental sustainability, and IEnvA has provided us with industry-specific assistance in our efforts.
