Environment

Our Commitment

Our employees are critical to our efforts. It is through their leadership and approach to work that we can meet our commitments and fulfill our company’s vision. We are committed to:

• Meeting or exceeding the requirements of applicable environmental laws, regulations, and local rules

• Conserving natural resources and energy

• Conducting our business activities in a manner that minimizes environmental impacts and incorporates best practices of pollution prevention and waste mini­mization

• Maintaining internal capabilities and management sys­tems to meet our environmental commitments, includ­ing company objectives

• Continually improving the way in which we manage our environmental responsibilities

Our Approach

We maintain environmental staff throughout Granite, to support operations and to manage our environmental programs. We have developed and implemented the Granite Environmental Management System (GEMS) to provide a consistent and reliable framework for managing our environmental responsibilities.

We maintain such tools as a comprehensive environmental and land management software system, and we support our goals by conducting self-evaluations of our operations. We engage our employees in our efforts by providing training and raising awareness of our environmental goals and sustainability objectives, and Granite is building a strong corporate culture of environmental stewardship and resource conservation.

“We use more than 2,000 recycled tires in each lane-mile of rubberized-asphalt concrete. We also recycle our vehicle batteries, aerosol cans, used oil, and antifreeze, diverting these waste streams from the local landfills and disposals facilities.”

—Jay McQuillan, Vice President of Group Operations

Granite’s environmental strategy is guided by our vision and directs us to continually evaluate and improve the way we address our environmental responsibilities while deriving the greatest value from the resources we use. Our strategy focuses our efforts on our environmental management procedures and systems, recycling of construction materials, energy conservation, and land stewardship. Below we touch on some of our activities and progress in these areas.

The Granite Environmental Management System is the centerpiece of our environmental management efforts. We are continuously improving our system, and in 2008 we made changes to conform to ISO 14001, an international environmental management system standard. GEMS is a system of business processes that supports Granite’s environmental objectives and policies and ensures that our actions align with our environmental vision and strategy, Core Values, and environmental affairs policy.

We support our goals by continuously evaluating our own operations. These evaluations provide insight into our day-to-day activities and management practices, positioning us to proactively address environmental risks and obligations. We advanced our efforts in 2009 by adopting a new, comprehensive environmental and land management software system, which improves our ability to manage compliance and monitor consistency throughout our operations.

We engage our employees in our efforts by raising their awareness of Granite’s environmental goals and business objectives and by building a strong corporate culture that motivates them to excel. While Granite’s environmental staff guides our environmental efforts, employees throughout the organization implement them—a measure of how seriously we take our environmental mandate.

Granite maintains environmental staff throughout all of our operations to manage our core environmental programs. We also employ public affairs coordinators who manage our community and government outreach efforts. Company leaders meet regularly to review and assess our environmental initiatives. We communicate our progress to employees through internal newsletters, Employee News and Granite Innovations, both of which feature articles about Granite’s environmental projects and achievements.

“Our vision is to lead our industry in environmentally responsible operations that reflect our Core Values. As such we are continually improving the management of our environmental responsibilities."