SuRF UK have recently published updated guidance on Sustainable Management Practices (SMP’s) which include 15 sustainable management practices posters.

The SMP’s are “relatively simple, common sense actions that can be implemented at any stage in a land contamination management project to improve its environmental, social and/or economic performance”. ‘SMPs can be used to improve the benefits (e.g. resource efficiency, community satisfaction) or reduce the negative impacts (e.g. spillages, complaints, cost) of a project, leading to project ‘sustainability gains’, without requiring a formal sustainability assessment’. The SMP document describes a simple process to encourage sustainable thinking, decision making and action across all land contamination management activities by using SMPs’. The process could also be applied to geotechnical projects.

The posters include topics such as ‘Set project milestones to ensure periodic review and optimisation of activities’, ‘minimise vehicle miles’ and ‘don’t allow plant and equipment to run for no purpose’.  These posters could be used in a variety of ways to encourage sustainable thinking, for example:

• As a suitable ‘Sustainability Moment’ in a meeting;
• As a slide in a presentation
• At project commencement
• As an aid in a site briefing

The document and posters can be accessed at the following link: https://www.claire.co.uk/projects-and-initiatives/surf-uk/21-executing-sustainable-remediation/84-sustainable-management-practices

October 4^th to 10^th was dyslexia awareness week and having a husband and a daughter with dyslexia, I felt prompted to write this article to raise awareness and celebrate the contribution that people with dyslexia make to our industry. This year’s theme is Invisible Dyslexia. Dyslexia itself isn’t visible and is all too often overlooked in the workplace and in education. As a result, people with dyslexia often feel unsupported, unwanted and invisible.

There are many benefits of dyslexia that are desirable to the geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering sector including spatial visualisation, lateral thinking, deciphering data and creativity. Being able to spatially visualise complex ground conditions is an invaluable skill. Each person’s experience of dyslexia will of course be different, but each will bring skills to your business. If you work with someone with dyslexia, please don’t focus on the miss spelt words -it’s easy for someone else in your team to proof read and spell check. Instead – focus on the technical content and the fact you have a much better report as a result

For anyone wanting to understand a little more about dyslexia or for anyone who need support and advice, I recommend visiting the British Dyslexia Association website.  British Dyslexia Association (bdadyslexia.org.uk) They have a number of services and resources available for people including a helpline and can provide workplace needs assessments. They have a powerpoint designed for a workplace presentation. Link: https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.bdadyslexia.org.uk%2Fuploads%2Fdocuments%2FSupport-Us%2F2021-Dyslexia-Week-Workplace-presentation.pptx%3Fv%3D1632413597&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK

Vivien Dent

AGS Chair Elect. Leader of the Business Practice Working Group

Article by Sally Hudson, AGS Chair

I have always been in awe of the commitment shown by our AGS committee and Working Group members, or in fact by anyone in industry contributing to any extra-curricular activities over and above the ‘day job’. Ours is an often demanding and fast-paced way of earning a living, requiring an extra level of effort over the norm; to travel, undertake site work and meet deadlines. So this extra-over, as it were, must be recognised and gratitude is extended to practitioners and to Member companies that sanction the considerable amount of non-fee earning contributions made by staff to the AGS and other committees and industry bodies. This is how the AGS remains a not-for-profit Association and can divert resources where needed the most. We strive to provide opportunities to all those in the wider geotechnical and geoenvironmental industry for participation in all our activities. I am also grateful to all of our seminar and conference speakers for their gifts of time and expertise, which enable the AGS to fulfil this commitment to members. I will continue to drive and actively engage in these events.

The time committed to AGS activities is particularly impactful on businesses both this year and last, and our extra-curricular roles are being tested now more than ever, as we recover from the upheavals posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, by Brexit and by the unprecedented demands of HS2 investigations, enabling works and construction. I have spoken to representatives of many companies over the last few weeks and months, from consultants, main and specialist sub-contractors and from client bodies and asset owners, and the situation seems universal in that there is a shortage of quality candidates to recruit to permanent positions. This in turn has led to an increased pressure on the existing labour force. It has been well-reported that there is a national skills shortage in the UK, affecting several sectors and engineering is one of them. This matter has been predicted for some time and I am raising it here as I perceive it as a real risk to one of the core tenets of the AGS, that of a commitment to promote and enhance quality and safe practice. How do we find our way through to ensure a balance between fulfilling our commitments to clients and maintaining a high quality of work and improving on it? As the new AGS Chair, it is my responsibility to support and guide the Association activities to ensure that we provide benefit to all of our participants. I am pleased to report that we are already exploring several routes towards helping address the skills shortage crisis (and it is a crisis). We are working with academic bodies to promote awareness of this rewarding career among students in higher education and to explore potential apprenticeship routes. We are also in the process of consulting with those early in their careers and encouraging representatives into Working Groups to ensure refreshed thinking and to capture input from that group.

There is, for some, still a sense of being under-valued as a profession. Although in the long term this situation in which we find ourselves may improve our standing and recognition in the market place, we are already seeing an increase in remuneration packages required to attract candidates, a cost that will only have to be picked up by our clients. We are seeing costs of certain major infrastructure schemes escalating and although our front-end services are only a part of those costs, it is not hard to see how this could spread across all sectors. One of the powers of the AGS is that it has a voice, along with other collaborative industry organisations within Ground Forum, for Members to lobby Government on issues affecting our members and industry. Those companies that are not Member organisations of the AGS but who are active in the community and who use AGS data, please consider joining to assist in the promotion and enhancement of quality and safe practice within our industry.

Hopefully you have seen an increase in communication on what we do as an organisation to those outside of the AGS Committees during the term of my predecessor’s Chair tenure and I will continue to support this. This is my plea for your suggestions as to how we can improve or how you can assist: ags@ags.org.uk.

Article provided by Danny Hope SiLC, Hydrock; Eric Cooper SiLC, Hydrock; and Liz Hart SiLC, Lithos

Since the initiative to promote brownfield regeneration through redevelopment and the requirement for local planning authorities to maintain a brownfield register, an increasing number of derelict and contaminated sites have been remediated and safely bought back into beneficial use. Available brownfield regeneration opportunities are now beginning to shift to consider historic landfills, where permits have been surrendered, and areas that were infilled prior to waste management controls.

This interest creates a fantastic opportunity to bring these sites back into beneficial use. It provides a much-needed opportunity to improve and enhance the environment whilst at the same time delivering new homes/places and enhanced employment opportunities for the benefit of the communities in which they are located. However, we are experiencing inconsistency as to how these sites are regulated via the implementation of current waste legislation.

There is an increasing insistence that remediation supporting redevelopment of these sites, reusing site won materials, should be managed under a deposit for recovery permit (Defra, 2009. Environmental Permitting Guidance. The Waste Framework Directive) rather than following well established land regeneration guidance. This approach is causing confusion and significant delays. Ultimately if a practical way forward is not identified, there is real concern that these brownfield sites will be blighted and passed over for development in preference for less challenging greenfield sites, due to the disproportionate regulatory burden.

Anthropogenic material found in historic landfill sites is often similar in composition to ‘Made Ground’ identified on many brownfield sites and can be both chemically and physically suitable for retention and reuse within the development.  Unfortunately, the current approach is that if material is deemed to have been formally disposed of i.e., placed in a landfill (as opposed to made ground that may have been deposited across a site), it must be waste irrespective of its composition; even natural soils that have been placed in a landfill would be described as waste.  Reuse of any waste can only be achieved under an environmental permit.  Once something is classed as a waste, it must be assessed in line with WM3 and allocated a hazardous or non-hazardous waste code.

Remediation carried out under a planning permission embodies a ‘suitable for use’ approach based on generic and/or more detailed quantitative risk assessment – an approach adopted by the industry for many years. However, waste codes are allocated based on absolute concentrations, irrespective of site-specific risks. It follows that because thresholds for hazardous waste allocations are relatively low, material that is deemed suitable for use based on the site-specific risk assessment may be allocated a contradictory and barrier-inducing hazardous waste code

Once material is classified as hazardous waste there are further restrictions on how that material can be used;

• Hazardous and non-hazardous waste codes cannot be mixed;
• Different hazardous waste codes cannot be mixed; and
• Treatment of hazardous waste is restricted to 10 tonnes per day.

It is also an inaccurate assumption that hazardous waste can simply be remediated to non-hazardous thresholds; this is often simply not feasible with time, cost and technical constraints.

The treatment of waste deemed hazardous under WM3 is limited to 10 tonnes per day. The current alternative is the application for and implementation of an Installation Permit. In the context of most remediation schemes, this quantity is miniscule and the upshot is that another layer of bureaucracy is introduced, with contractors having to apply for permits that they have no experience of. The industrial Emissions Directive that drives this requirement was surely never meant to regulate land remediation works?

Once in place, environmental permits are detailed on the Environment Agency public register. Permits (whether live or surrendered) will then be identified during land conveyancing, again this is a deterrent to development with property being ‘blighted’ and final sales hindered. The surrender of an environmental permit can also be a lengthy and costly process, again steering developers towards an easier option.

Within a remediation and earthworks project, limiting the options for re-using physically and chemically suitable site-won material potentially increases off-site disposal which again reduces a site’s commercial viability.

The current approach to historic landfills also undermines the government’s ‘Brownfield First’ policy and could lead to local authorities not achieving their house building targets and / or decreasing the provision of employment opportunities regionally and nationally.

Moreover, the issues raised here may also contradict the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. Many of the aforementioned types of site are located in the midlands and the north where land values are such that viability can be a major barrier to regeneration, more so than in the south where land values tend to be higher and development opportunities more prevalent.

Restricting the reclamation of site-won material also directly opposes the drive for sustainable development, which is a core principle in the National Planning Policy Framework and even the Environment Agency has a core principle of improving the environment while promoting economic growth. Sustainability is also important in the wider context, we are a small Island, we must ensure we use available resources wisely.

It should be noted that UK industry is at the cutting edge of global remediation innovation, developing products which are exported around the world, a significant contributor to the UK economy. If re-development of brownfield sites becomes less prevalent, this innovation is likely to be stifled and income generated by the export of new technologies overseas will reduce.

Overall, it is unfortunately the case that aspects of the current regulatory regime are creating barriers to sustainable remediation and successful redevelopment of former waste disposal sites rather than facilitating it. No environmental or social benefit is accruing from the position currently being taken and there is no value in it beyond an unimaginative commitment to compliance.

CL:AIRE, with the support of the Environment Agency, has pioneered the sustainable re-use of materials via the Definition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice (DoWCoP) which has seen the beneficial re-use of millions of tonnes of earth across England and Wales, when the overarching EU Waste Directive threatened to stifle brownfield regeneration. SiLC and its members have always supported appropriate use of the DoWCoP and would like to ensure its continued and consistent use in line with the guidance and its overarching aim to promote sustainability and protection of human health and the environment.

We hope that a swift resolution can be found to these issues, with a clear and consistent way forward that does not stifle development opportunities, is protective of human health and the environment, encourages industrial entrepreneurship and innovation, but does not contradict government policies and site-specific approach to risk evaluation. Discussions between CL:AIRE, the Environment Agency, government and other experts has commenced and is ongoing. The SiLC PTP will also be adding its support to these discussions.