Independent Assurance Report
This unofficial English translation of the German-language Independent Assurance Report has been prepared by HOCHTIEF and is provided for information purposes only.
To HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft, Essen
We have been commissioned with a limited assurance engagement in relation to selected data in the Sustainability Report 2009 prepared by HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft, Essen. In accordance with the terms of our engagement, our examination covered the sections “The Company— Creating Sustainable Value” (pages 6–11), “Area 1: Sustainable Products and Services” (pages 14–27) and “Area 2: Active Climate Protection” (pages 28–41).
Executive Board Responsibility
HOCHTIEF Aktiengesellschaft’s Executive Board is responsible for preparation of the Sustainability Report 2009, applying the criteria set out in the G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines published by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI):
- Materiality
- Stakeholder inclusiveness
- Sustainability context
- Completeness
- Balance
- Clarity
- Accuracy
- Timeliness
- Comparability
- Reliability
This responsibility includes selection and use of appropriate methods for preparation of the Sustainability Report, the use of assumptions and estimates for individual sustainability disclosures that are reasonable in the circumstances, and the design, implementation and maintenance of systems and processes relevant to preparation of the Sustainability Report.
Practitioner’s Responsibility
Our responsibility is to express a conclusion based on our work as to whether any matters have come to our attention which cause us to believe that the data in the “The Company—Creating Sustainable Value”, “Area 1: Sustainable Products and Services” and “Area 2: Active Climate Protection” sections of the Sustainability Report have not been prepared in accordance with the above-mentioned criteria of the GRI G3 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.
We conducted our work in accordance with International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000. This standard stipulates that we comply with ethical requirements and plan and perform the assurance engagement so as to express our conclusion with limited assurance.
In a limited assurance engagement, the evidence-gathering procedures are more limited than in a reasonable assurance engagement. Therefore, less assurance is obtained than in a reasonable assurance engagement. The procedures selected depend on the practitioner’s judgment. The procedures we followed in the scope of our work included:
- Inspection of the documentation of systems and processes relating to sustainable management.
- Inspection of the documentation of systems and processes for collecting, analyzing and aggregating sustainability data and random testing thereof.
- Discussions with employees of the Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Communications units commissioned with preparation of the Report and discussions concerning the analysis of data relating in particular to the thematic areas of building diagnosis, green building and HOCHTIEF Energy Management.