As sustainability demands grow, sustainability professionals – along with many other groups – are increasingly expected to help drive the transition within the construction sector. Yet their roles are often both unclear and constantly shifting, making it difficult to know what their mandate is in different projects and organizational settings. Stina Hellsvik’s doctoral thesis examines the everyday work of sustainability professionals up close, showing how their roles are shaped and reshaped in practice – and which conditions enable or limit their ability to make a real difference over time.
What challenges do you focus on?
“Even though sustainability roles have existed for decades, they remain loosely defined – what the role involves constantly shifts depending on the project, the people involved, and which sustainability issues happen to be in focus. For many sustainability professionals, the role means being expected to act both as a generalist and a specialist at the same time. Sustainability issues also tend to run parallel to, rather than fully integrated within, traditional structures in the construction sector.”
“In addition to environmental issues, sustainability roles may include quality assurance, health and safety, energy systems, and increasingly also social sustainability. This broad and continuously evolving scope makes it challenging for sustainability professionals to make sense of their roles, often leading to an ambiguous professional identity and sometimes unrealistic expectations.”
“Working across disciplines and organizational levels introduces further challenges. Sustainability professionals often lack organizational stability and formal influence, which makes long-term change work difficult. In many projects, sustainability expertise is also brought in too late to have a meaningful impact.”
“My research therefore aims to make the roles and work of sustainability professionals in the construction sector more visible and more critically examined: What do these roles look like? What expectations shape them? And how do they influence the capacity to drive sustainable transformation over time? The ambition is to contribute to clearer roles, better working conditions, and stronger impact for sustainability work across the sector.”
How do you address the problem?
“To understand what sustainability professionals actually do in practice, I start where the work happens – in their everyday professional settings. Instead of assuming what the roles should look like, I focus on how they are experienced and carried out by those responsible for them.”
“A key part of this has been conducting in-depth interviews with professionals who have worked with sustainability in the construction sector since the early 1990s. Their experiences offer valuable insights into how these roles have evolved over time. I also interviewed people from different parts of the sector – architects, consultants, clients, and contractors – to capture a wide range of perspectives and better understand how expectations differ between actors.”
“In addition, I shadowed an environmental manager in a major construction project over an extended period. Following her day-to-day work allowed me to observe the decisions, dilemmas, and negotiations that characterize a sustainability professional’s role in practice. This gave a concrete understanding of what sustainability work looks like on the ground in a complex project environment.”
What are the main findings?
“My research shows that the roles of sustainability professionals have changed significantly since they first appeared in the construction sector in the 1990s. What began as relatively narrow functions linked to environmental management systems have grown into a broad and increasingly complex field of responsibility. Today, sustainability professionals navigate work situations that are both fragmented and constantly shifting, which makes it difficult to establish stability or long-term structures.”
“A key finding is that it is extremely challenging to professionalize a field that is continuously reshaped by new expectations, regulations, and priorities. The sector’s focus also tends to shift between different sustainability issues – such as energy, climate, safety, or social sustainability – which creates a lack of continuity. My research further shows that the scope of sustainability work lacks a stable foundation; what sustainability “is” changes over time depending on broader societal trends, organizational needs, and market dynamics. This fluidity also affects the legitimacy of sustainability roles, as their mandate and responsibilities can appear unclear or constantly in flux.”
“The work itself is characterized by ongoing balancing acts. Sustainability professionals are expected to both engage colleagues in day-to-day project work and negotiate strategic priorities with management – often without a clear formal mandate. As a result, much of the role relies on inspiring and convincing others rather than making authoritative decisions.”
“Another challenge is the lack of clarity around who is responsible for what. Many actors in the construction sector are unsure when sustainability expertise should be involved or who holds responsibility for specific issues. This often leads to delays, inefficiencies, or important matters falling between the cracks.”
“Taken together, the findings show that sustainability professionals operate with strong motivation but within structures that do not always support long-term change. For the sustainability transition to gain real momentum, these roles need to become clearer, better established, and more integrated into the construction sector’s core processes.”
What do you hope your research will lead to?
“I hope my results can empower – and in some cases also relieve – the sustainability professionals working in sustainability roles within the construction sector. By making the nature of their work more visible, along with the challenges they face, I aim to support better working conditions and greater impact for their expertise. These are my hopes and ambitions, reflecting what I believe the research could help make possible, even if the thesis itself does not claim that such outcomes will occur automatically.”
“I also hope the research will encourage the sector to further invest in developing sustainability roles. While sustainability concerns affect all professions, specialists will always be needed. What matters is raising the baseline level of sustainability knowledge across the sector – not so that everyone becomes an expert, but so that people know when and how to draw on sustainability expertise effectively. My hope is that the findings can contribute to clearer roles, better organization, and a more sustainable everyday working environment for those leading these efforts.”
Read the thesis: Sustainability roles in the making: Exploring the work and agency of sustainability professionals in the Swedish construction industry
Public defence: 16 December 2025 at 13:15
- Doctor, Innovation and R&D Management, Technology Management and Economics
- Professor, Innovation and R&D Management, Technology Management and Economics