The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs defines sustainability with 17 Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) varying from social to technical goals. Industries and communities are engaged in various implementation mechanisms to achieve these goals. However, these efforts should be thought through thoroughly, scoped at the fitting scale, defined and conditioned well, assessed with appropriate measures, accepted widely, and appreciated by all stakeholders. These expectations collectively necessitate a sustainability framework as a guideline to define and implement a project and to evaluate its success.

In Civil Engineering projects, there are a few industry-accepted rating systems to directly or indirectly evaluate a project's sustainability; This framework list includes  LEED, Envision, Greenroads, INVEST, and Green Globes. The Institute of Sustainable Infrastructure's Envision and the U.S. green building council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) are widely used in North America to guide, assess and rate a project for sustainability. LEED is mainly focused on guiding green building design and maintenance, considered "Vertical Sustainability | Infrastructure Centric." Envision, in contrast, is focused on looking at the infrastructure and the project's impacts on the surrounding communities, which is considered "Horizontal Sustainability | Community Centric."

Envision framework is based on three sustainabilities, Environmental, Economic, and Social. It is made with 64 sustainability and resiliency criteria that are grouped into five categories. These categories are Quality of Life, Leadership, Resource Allocation, Natural World, and Climate & Resilience.

This talk summarizes the Envision framework for a general audience and provides information on how a qualified professional can become an Envision Sustainability Professional (ENV SP).