*6.2. Mechanism Discussion: What Design Criteria Enable the Mechanism (for Measuring SDG Impacts) to Achieve the Outcomes?*

The views were consistent (with the four exceptions mentioned in the preceding paragraph) in stating that this was an important area for the construction sector to get right but that there was no best practice established for how to deliver an effective mechanism. Therefore, despite the strong support for its adoption, the depth of knowledge on SDGs was mostly superficial, and only 8% of the organisations interviewed self-assessed their SDG measurement processes as repeatable (Finding #2), with only a further 23% having processes at an "early adoption stage". The majority had not yet defined the SDG measurement processes. Unsurprisingly, there were many, especially at board and CEO level (with notable exceptions, such as 5, 7, 8 and 12), who showed some confusion in their knowledge of SDGs, sustainability and sustainable development. This was reflected in having relatively consistent and well-informed views on specialist areas, such as carbon management, but this was less evident in the details of what the SDGs represented.

The low level of uptake of the SDG measurements at the project level was attributed to the following reasons. (a) The complexity of the SDG framework, with the scale of ambition understandable at a high level but made excessively complicated when examining the 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators. (b) The lack of adoption of SDGs by clients did not mandate SDG measurement (Finding #2). There was therefore no incentive to dedicate finite resources to a complicated task that might not deliver any value; indeed, it might even identify their weaknesses, which only a few explicitly opined was a good way of learning and developing.

A further design criterion that emerged, to enable the mechanism for measuring SDG impacts to achieve the outcomes, was the ability to find a golden thread from enterprise portfolio level to project level (Finding #10). This was most clearly explained by the participants that were most developed in their SDG measurement processes (2, 3, 11 and 20) but also included others who were actively developing SDG processes (8, 9, 14, 19, 27, 28 and 36). Whilst there was confidence in their self-assessed ability to achieve the golden thread from project to portfolio level (Finding #10), this was mostly not substantiated by any evidence (except 2, 3 and 11).

The findings from the research study allow evaluation of the propositions synthesised from the literature review as follows.
