IMPROVING THE ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF MOROCCAN INDUSTRIES: AN ASSESSMENT STUDY OF INDUSTRIAL PROJECTS

The environmental awareness of Moroccan engineers in charge of industrial projects has become essential to improve environmental performance and, more broadly, to contribute to the environment protection and sustainable development strategy of Morocco. However, it is difficult to measure the level of environmental awareness among engineers and to promote it. Thus, to answer this issue and provide comprehension tools, a field study was carried out among Moroccan company managers from seven different industrial sectors. The manufacturing companies are mostly certified ISO 14001 and ISO 9001, they are nevertheless strongly consumers of raw materials and exercise polluting industrial activities which generate waste. The survey aims to gain a better understanding of the policies of these companies in terms of their environmental management of industrial projects, and expected engineering skills. It covers the projects managed by engineers from different specialties who graduated from Moroccan schools. The study combines on the one side, a quantitative assessment section on the mastery of the environmental footprint in the operational decision-making phase of 174 industrial projects led by Moroccan engineers. On the other side, it includes a qualitative analysis section of the expectations and recommendations of the industrialists for a better environmental management of projects. The study shows that the level of environmental implication of the engineers in the projects leaves room for improvement. The industrialists' attention was mainly focused on the control of the environmental footprint when completing projects, whilst still contributing to the improvement of the performance of industry and the country