| Course | BU 436 Global Project Management and Sustainable Practices |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 5 |
| Paper type | Sustainability plan with costs |
| Length | About 810 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Project Management |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 436 Unit 5
Fifty-Seven Thousand Dollars of Commitments, Each With a Meter and a Checker: A Sustainability Plan With Costs for a Composite Solar Cold Room Project in Central Kenya
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 436: Global Project Management and Sustainable Practices
Instructor Name
March 11, 2026
Fifty-Seven Thousand Dollars of Commitments, Each With a Meter and a Checker: A Sustainability Plan With Costs for a Composite Solar Cold Room Project in Central Kenya
What the Plan Commits To
Brightwell Cooling, the invented Ohio firm in this course's case, is putting solar cold rooms into 40 Kenyan cooperatives from a Mexican assembly line. A solar cold room is a sustainability project by description, which is exactly why this plan is needed: without numbers, the project's green credentials would rest on its category rather than its choices. Six commitments are set out below. Each carries its cost, what it does to the schedule, how it will be measured and who verifies the measurement. Silvius and Schipper (2014) found that the literature on sustainable project management is strong on principles and weak on how they enter a project's scope and budget, and this plan is written to be the second kind.
Three of the commitments were inherited from the funder: a low global warming refrigerant, battery take-back and a 60 percent share of installation labor hired in Kenya. Three were chosen by the project. Costs are composite estimates against a total project budget of about $1.9 million.
The Commitments
The table summarizes each commitment. The sections after it explain the less obvious entries.
| Commitment | Cost | Schedule effect | Measure | Verifier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Propane refrigerant instead of a hydrofluorocarbon blend | About $620 per room, $24,800 total | Two added days of flammable refrigerant training for each installer | Refrigerant type and charge recorded on every commissioning record | Funder's independent monitor, from records and a site sample |
| 2. Battery take-back through a licensed Nairobi recycler | $150 per room held in escrow, $6,000 | None during delivery | Battery serial numbers registered with the recycler | Recycler's certificates when batteries are returned |
| 3. Kenyan labor share of at least 60% | $1,800 training per new hire, 8 hires, $14,400 | Hiring must start 8 weeks before first installation | Installation hours by worker and hiring location, from timesheets | Funder audit of a timesheet sample each quarter |
| 4. Sea freight in full containers, no air freight for complete units | Saves an estimated $3,000 per room against air, but adds about 4 weeks transit | Last sailing date moves earlier | Freight mode and container fill per shipment | Brightwell logistics; freight invoices |
| 5. Energy performance of each room | $2,500 for a testing protocol and remote logging setup | Adds a 48-hour logged test to commissioning | Daily energy use and temperature held, from the controller | Pune monitoring team, reviewed by Columbus quality |
| 6. Food loss before and after at 10 cooperatives | $9,000 for a university partner's baseline and follow-up survey | Baseline survey must precede installation at those sites | Share of harvested produce discarded, before and after | University partner, independent of Brightwell |
| Total cost | About $56,700 (sea freight savings not netted) |
Why the Refrigerant Matters Most
The largest climate effect of a cold room is often not its electricity, which here is solar, but its refrigerant. The common hydrofluorocarbon blend for small cold rooms has a 100-year global warming potential of about 3,900, meaning each kilogram leaked warms the climate as much as roughly 3.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide, while propane's is about 3 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007). A typical charge of about 3 kilograms of the blend, if it leaked over a unit's life, would equal roughly 11.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide per room, or about 470 tonnes across 40 rooms. The difference is the reason the funder attached this condition, and it is also why the commitment is measured by recording the refrigerant and charge in every unit rather than by a general statement: a single substituted unit from a supplier running short of propane components would quietly undo part of the benefit.
Propane has a cost beyond the $620 per room: it is flammable. That is why installers need extra training and why the decision rights document makes refrigerant safety a central decision. The schedule effect, two training days per installer, is small, but it must happen before the first installation, not during it.
Where the Commitments Cost Time
Two commitments move dates. The Kenyan labor share requires eight new hires to be trained and licensed before installations reach full pace, which, as the regulatory analysis showed, takes about eight weeks. Sea freight adds about four weeks of transit compared with air, which moves the last sailing from Mexico earlier and removes air freight as an easy way to recover a late shipment. The project accepts that loss of flexibility, but it must be protected with schedule buffer in the integrated plan rather than discovered in December.
The food loss survey also has a timing constraint. A baseline taken after a cold room is installed cannot show what the cooperative lost before it, so the university partner must survey the 10 selected cooperatives in May, before their rooms arrive.
Measurement and Verification
Every measure comes from a record the project produces anyway, a commissioning form, a timesheet, an invoice or the controller's log, so measurement does not depend on extra reporting that busy site staff might skip. Verification is assigned to someone other than the team being measured wherever possible: the funder's monitor, the recycler, the university partner. Carvalho and Rabechini (2017) found that sustainability practices in projects were associated with better project success, but the association depends on those practices being managed with the same discipline as cost and schedule. The plan therefore reports the six measures in the monthly project report, beside cost and schedule, not in a separate annual statement.
Two measures will not be complete when the project closes in January 2027. Battery take-back can only be verified when batteries reach the end of their life, years later, so the escrow and the registered serial numbers are the project's part and the recycler's certificates are the long-run proof. The food loss follow-up survey needs a full harvest season with the cold rooms in use, so the university partner's second survey falls after project closure and is funded in advance from the $9,000. Both are recorded in the closure report as open measures with named owners, rather than reported as achieved.
The total cost of about $56,700 is roughly 3 percent of the project budget. The sea freight saving, if it holds, pays back about twice that. Brightwell, its partners and every cost and measure here are composites for this course.
References
Carvalho, M. M., & Rabechini, R. (2017). Can project sustainability management impact project success? An empirical study applying a contingent approach. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1120-1132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2017.02.018
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2007). Climate change 2007: The physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press.
Silvius, A. G., & Schipper, R. P. (2014). Sustainability in project management: A literature review and impact analysis. Social Business, 4(1), 63-96. https://doi.org/10.1362/204440814X13948909253866
The Herzing BU 436 Unit 5 instructions
BU 436 Unit 5 asks students to build a sustainability plan for a global project with costs attached. Typical requirements are a set of environmental and social commitments, each with its cost, effect on the schedule, a measure and a verifier, plus a statement of how the plan is reported. Instructors usually reject commitments without numbers and expect sources for any emissions or impact figures. Commitments inherited from sponsors should be kept separate from those chosen by the project. Where the case gives no costs, students may estimate them if labeled as composite. Reporting frameworks may be named but are not always required. The plan is usually one main table with a few pages of APA 7 explanation.
Inside the BU 436 Unit 5 example
The plan explains why a solar project still needs one, then separates three funder commitments from three chosen by the project. A six-row table gives each commitment's cost, schedule effect, measure and verifier, with a total. The refrigerant section sizes global warming potential from a cited source, converts a typical charge into tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and names the flammability cost. A timing section shows how the labor share and sea freight move dates, and why the food loss baseline must precede installation. The measurement section explains that each measure comes from an existing record, assigns verification to independent parties and names two measures that remain open after closure.
Where the points sit in the BU 436 Unit 5 rubric
Sustainability plan rubrics at Herzing typically reward specific commitments, realistic costs, schedule integration, measurable indicators, independent verification and clear sources, together with writing and APA. Commitments earn full points when they are concrete actions rather than values. Costs score highest when each is itemized and the total is set against the budget. Schedule integration is judged on whether the student shows which commitments move dates. Indicators earn credit when measurable and drawn from real records. Verification rewards assigning checks to someone outside the team being measured. Sources matter most for impact claims such as emissions. Instructors also credit honesty about commitments that cannot be verified by project closure.
BU 436 Unit 5 help: mistakes that cost points
Sustainability plans often lose points by listing aspirations, such as reduce environmental impact, with no cost or measure. Another common problem is claiming emissions reductions without any source or calculation. Students frequently ignore the schedule effects of commitments, such as slower shipping or longer training. Some assign verification to the same team being measured. Others present sustainability costs separately from the main budget, which hides the trade-offs. Plans often report long-term outcomes as achieved when they cannot yet be measured. Finally, copying figures from an employer's published sustainability report without context rarely fits the project in question and can misrepresent what that company actually did.
Get a BU 436 Unit 5 example written to your instructions
We need the Unit 5 instructions and the rubric from your BU 436 classroom, plus the project scenario and any commitments your section has fixed. We write a custom example costing each commitment separately, with measures before targets, banded figures, schedule effects and a defended set of rejected options. Nothing to pay for the first custom sample, back in 24 to 48 hours.
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BU 436 Unit 5 questions, answered
Where do I get costs if the case gives none?
Build them from stated assumptions and show your arithmetic. A commitment to divert waste, for example, can be estimated from a volume you assume, a rate you assume, and a duration the case does give. Write both assumptions down, present the result as a range, and say what would change it. That is defensible. A confident figure with no derivation is not.
Should I name a specific reporting framework?
Only one you have actually looked at, cited with the date, and described in general terms. Frameworks are revised and their requirements differ by sector and jurisdiction, so treat anything you say about one as a position to confirm against current guidance. Where the instructions name a framework, follow that. Where they do not, it is safer to define your own measures well than to invoke a standard loosely.
My employer publishes a sustainability report. Can I use it?
A published report is public and can be cited like any other source, with a date. What stays off limits is everything behind it: the internal country operations data the figures were built from, the supplier contracts holding the relevant clauses, and any compliance filings. Cite what is published, keep the rest out, and write the project itself as a composite.
Where can I find a free BU 436 Unit 5 sample paper?
The whole BU 436 Unit 5 sustainability plan with costs is free above, with the six-commitment table, the refrigerant calculation and margin notes. For a different project or set of commitments, send your instructions and a free custom plan is written, usually within two days.
Where do costs come from in BU 436 Unit 5?
From the case, supplier quotes or labeled estimates. The sample uses composite estimates, such as $620 per room for propane components, and states them against the total budget so the reader can see what sustainability costs.