This year’s SiLC Annual Forum was held virtually on Tuesday 30^th March between 09:30-13:30. Over 100 delegates joined us on the webinar.

Hosted by SiLC PTP Chair, Ian Evans (Technical Director at Wood PLC), the event featured a stellar line up of expert, industry speakers, each covering a wide array of topics.

The interactive event encouraged audience participation via live polls, the webinar chat facility and Q&A sessions. Delegates also had the opportunity to network in one of the multiple breakout rooms, each co-hosted by our presenters and members of the SiLC PTP.

The event was sponsored by Jackson Remediation Ltd as the Diamond Sponsor and VertaseFLI Ltd as the Gold Sponsor.

Speakers

Joe Jackson of Jackson Remediation Ltd, presented on Remediation and Risk: Identification, Mitigation and Transparent Apportionment

Joe looked at the importance of Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) and mechanisms to engage with Contractor pre-Contract.  Transparent and collaborative Risk (and Opportunity) identification methods were discussed along with suitable methods of apportionment and mitigation.

Dr. Alan Thomas, Technical Fellow at ERM & Co-Chair of SuRF UK, gave a presentation on The SuRF UK Sustainability Process and Indicator Guidance.

The SuRF UK sustainability indicator set was originally published in 2011 and has been widely used both in the UK and internationally. Following review SuRF UK has further developed the guidance to provide a greater depth in the rationale for each headline and a more explicit set of instructions for their use. Alan provided an introduction and brief overview of this recently revised guidance.

Ellanor Joyce, Project Manager within the Magnox Winfrith End State Project, presented on the phased assessment of land quality for the Winfrith site through the final stages of decommissioning to support site closure

Ellanor is responsible for integrating site restoration objectives, interfacing with decommissioning projects and ensuring effective stakeholder engagement to support the final stages of decommissioning and site restoration.  The Magnox Winfrith nuclear site is moving through to decommissioning process to deliver the next planned land use of Heathland with Public Access and the eventual release from regulatory controls after 60 years of operations.

Ellanor provided an overview of the approach and process for land quality assessment and management across the site to allow the next land use and release from regulatory controls.

Dr. Tom Henman, Director at RSK Geosciences and Deputy Chair of the SiLC PTP, presented on Effective Risk Communication and Stakeholder Engagement

Starting with the question are we paying enough attention to communicating understanding of land contamination risks, Tom provided a reminder of relevant guidance and key principles for effective risk communication and stakeholder engagement. The award-winning Buchanan St. Ambrose Schools independent review was presented as a case study. Here such techniques were applied successfully to achieve a transition from stakeholder concern regarding health impacts and potential links to land contamination at the site and suspicion of public authorities’ motives to one of acceptance, trust and confidence being restored.

Highly experienced contaminated land officers Ann Barker and Rebekah Norbury jointly provided an introduction to the National Contaminated Land Officers’ Group (NCLOG) from inception through to progress to date plus an updated view on NQMS from a Contaminated Land Officer’s viewpoint.

Dr. Paul Nathanail, Technical Director Contamination Assessment and Remediation at GHD UK and Deputy Chair of the SiLC Board, provided an interesting and useful presentation on Professional Qualifications and their recognition in a post-Brexit world.

A professional is someone who is recognised by their peers as having special knowledge or skills and who applies them under a code of conduct.  Working in different jurisdictions as a recognised professional can allow knowledge transfer and provide suitable opportunities for the individual.  With the UK’s departure from the European Union, it is no longer the case that our professional qualifications are recognised within the EU – or vice versa.  Paul reflected on what this means for individuals and their potential clients.

In addition to the webinar speakers and presentations, a workshop on Sustainability was provided by Louise Allan MIEMA, CEnv, who is a Sustainability Manager in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation. Louise provided a workshop during the breakout sessions, bringing with her, 20 years experience in a variety of sustainability and environmental teams across the estate and equipment branches of the Ministry of Defence. Her expertise has lain in the strategic tools and processes that co-ordinate and encompass the many specialist topics under the Sustainable Development banner (including Land Quality objectives). These include Sustainability Appraisals and Strategic Environmental Assessment, Sustainable Procurement, and corporate Sustainability Strategies and governance.
Her current priorities include refining DIO’s Sustainability Strategy and embedding Social Value in infrastructure procurements. Both workshops were well attended and provided some thought provoking discussions.

Sponsor Overview

Jackson Remediation is a specialist Remediation and Enabling contractor which focusses on value creation and quality delivery, drawing upon deep technical expertise and profound understanding of the construction process. By consistently striving to address contamination issues in the most robust yet cost effective manner, clients never need to choose between price and quality again. https://www.jacksonremediation.co.uk/

 

VertaseFLI are extremely pleased to be sponsoring the SilC conference once again. VertaseFLI are one of the largest remediation contractors in the UK and technical excellence has always been at the core of our offering to clients. Our full range of service can be found at www.vertasefli.co.uk.

 

 

 

 

Contact SiLC@SiLC.org.uk if you have any queries about this event or our future events.

This free, monthly podcast will feature Steve Hadley, (Chair of the Federation of Piling Specialists and MD at Central Piling) where he will interview the movers and shakers of the ground engineering industry.

The first episode features Yvonne Ainsworth (Director of GDG) and Martin Pedley (Managing Director of GSS Piling) where they discuss the Piling 2020 Conference. The episode is sponsored by Central Piling and can be listened to HERE.

Steve Hadley says, “I’ve been involved with the FPS podcast now for nearly a year and we’ve attracted a really supportive group of listeners. The topics have been much broader than piling and technical aspects of our industry’s work, with regular themes related to environmental sustainability, equality and wellbeing. This has helped ensure that those tuning in are from a variety of backgrounds. Interestingly the latest data shows that over 30% of our listeners now are female, which compares well to the industry percentage of 11%. “

“Perhaps unsurprisingly with this form of media, our average listener is also relatively young. Therefore, I feel that a geotechnical podcast can play an important role in attracting people from all demographics into the industry and building its community. The support of the Ground Forum and Ground Engineering Magazine enables us to do this in a more expansive way. They will help us provide content across the range of geo disciplines and promotion of the show.”

Breaking Ground is available for free download on channels including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

Name: Grant Taylor

Job title: Managing Director – UK

 

What does RST Instruments do and what areas does it specialise in? 

For over 40 years, RST’s pioneering technologies have enabled iconic infrastructure projects, including ground-breaking dams, tunnels and more. From our base in Western Canada, we’ve grown a reputation for right-fit solutions that span the lifecycle of your project, from designing and building to training, installing, inspecting, and updating monitoring systems. Our 40,000 square-foot plant has the capacity, the machinery, and the skilled staff to meet long production runs, big orders, and tight schedules. That’s a legacy worth protecting.

 

Where are your offices located?

Our headquarters are based in Maple Ridge, Canada. Our UK office is based in Stowmarket, Suffolk.

 

How many people does RST Instruments employ?

RST instruments employs over 130 people.

 

How long have you worked at RST Instruments?

Five years. Before that, I worked for a distributor of them for about 10 years.

 

What is your career background, and what enticed you to work for RST Instruments?

At the time, there were a lot of changes with the company I was working for. I reached out to RST Instruments to ask if there was something we could do. Four weeks after that RST UK was set up. It was a very quick process.

 

What is your current role within the company and what does a typical day entail?

My current role in the company’s managing director for which is equivalent VP for rest of the world sales. But the title is managing director UK because I run the UK office. So, I wear two hats. What does the typical day look like or a typical COVID day? Because they are quite different. Typical day is emails. Meetings with customers, partners, looking at strategic kind of plays in terms of new technology, new geographical partners. I also help on some of our more technical projects from a sales perspective.

 

What are our RST instruments company values?

Quality. I believe it to be one of our values, I think. I think it’s important for us that people get information and the appropriate data from the systems we provide. I think I would say are at our core is delivering value on the systems that we sell. You know, it sounds cliché, but we don’t just sell the system and run. We want to make sure that people are getting data, that it’s useful. It helps with the whole instrumentation industry get a better reputation in the market. I think there’s a lot of people out there that just they sell sensors and they don’t care whether they work.

 

Are there any projects our achievements within RST Instruments that you’re particularly proud that you’re you’ve been a part of?

My proudest achievement is the growth that we have achieved in markets, you wouldn’t expect like Africa and Kazakhstan. One project I am quite proud of was the AECOM Bridge project that we did. There’s a case study online where we did the dynamic monitoring with strain gauges and the crack meters and laser distance meters. It was an interesting project located in Leeds.

 

How important is sustainability within the company?

Sustainability is important to RST from both an environmental perspective, but I think also from a sustainability of business perspective. We want to build systems that are going to be around well into the future. The sustainability of our monitoring, to give continuity through a project life cycle is important. We are one of the companies that can offer that kind of sustainable approach.

 

How does RST Instruments support graduates in early career professionals who are just entering the industry?

RST has got quite a young and dynamic sales team in the UK the sales team. I think the same thing could be said of Measurand. We’ve often got students going through in Maple Ridge, BC. There’s a few roles where we do employ people as part of their graduate training and the work experience.

 

How has COVID-19 affected the day-to-day running of RST Instruments. How have staff adapted?

I think the staff of adapted very well to a new environment where we’re all working from home. I think the impact of COVID on our organization, not traveling not doing exhibitions, has opened our eyes to newer, different ways to do business. I would say we miss the face-to-face approach with our partners and key customers. We would like to get that back to normality soon as we can because it’s great doing Microsoft Teams—and in some ways we’ve got closer to many people because Teams is the way to go, we can do monthly meetings for example—but I also feel there’s nothing like having a beer with the guy to build a relationship.

 

Why does RST Instruments feel the AGS is important to the industry?

I think it’s important to the UK, not only the UK, but further afield. The kind of premise of having a generalized data format for the site investigation, for geotechnical instrumentation and monitoring. As we move forwards it makes sense to have a global standard and I think the AGS committee, group if you like, is really at the forefront of pushing that. It’s very difficult to standardize an industry.

 

What are RST Instruments’ future ambitions?

RST Instruments’ future ambitions are to continue to strive to be the world leader in providing geotechnical and structural instrumentation monitoring solutions. Our goal is to be kind of part of the process—I wouldn’t I want to say cradle to grave—but we want to be involved from inception through to delivery and continued delivery of that service.

On 26^th February 2021, the AGS held their second webinar on the subject of equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), in association with the Ground Forum and Federation of Piling Specialists.

EDI is often spoken about at strategic, policy and procedural level but how can these be developed to raise awareness and influence positive actions within the geotechnical and geoenvironmental sector? Improving Company Performance through Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, focused on how our industry can start to address inequalities and promote diversity and inclusion, and discussed the barriers as well as positive approaches and initiatives to EDI, which will help change attitudes, attract new talent and improve retention within the industry moving forward.

234 delegates registered for the webinar from countries including USA, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Spain, Latvia, India, Pakistan, Australia, Switzerland and Poland. The event discussed the industry challenges and introduced potential solutions for companies to eliminate discrimination, create equal opportunities and develop good working relationships between different people.

Speakers for the event included Emma Stewart MBE (co-founder of Timewise), Sharon Slinger (Director at Constructing Rainbows Ltd.), Steve Hadley (FPS Chair and Managing Director of Central Piling) and Martin Griffin (Principal Geotechnical Engineer). The event was Chaired by Sally Hudson (AGS Chair Elect and Regional Manager at Coffey Geotechnics Limited, A Tetra Tech Company) and Julian Lovell (AGS Chair and Managing Director at Equipe Group).

If you missed this webinar, the replay is now live and available for free view on the AGS website. Click HERE to view the replay and download the speaker presentations and file handouts.

Full Name: Rachel Griffiths
Job Title: Contracts and Legal Manager
Company: Fugro

I started my career in 1988 as a maritime engineer in design offices and on construction sites in the UK and the Middle East but soon found that I enjoyed the commercial and contractual aspects more than the technical ones. Once I became a chartered engineer, I moved into contracts full time. I completed my law degree while working as a contract specialist focusing on construction and consultancy contracts. I joined Fugro in 2013 as legal and contracts adviser for land and marine projects and found that I needed to expand my knowledge to cover ground investigation contracts, so I completed a master’s in oil and gas law and wrote my thesis on offshore wind contracts. As part of Fugro’s European legal team, I now advise Fugro on legal and contractual matters regarding onshore and offshore ground investigations in the UK, Europe and Africa.

What or who inspired you to join the geotechnical industry?
I came to the geotechnical industry from the wider onshore construction world, but what attracted me to Fugro was the range of challenges in the offshore work. Whilst I well understood the risks and challenges of ground investigation and construction onshore, undertaking ground investigations offshore is another level of complexity. The constraints of vessels and resources, and the impact of weather, currents and water depths must be addressed in addition to the usual onshore risks of access and ground conditions. Every day is interesting and challenging.

What does a typical day entail?
At the moment, a lot of sitting at home in my study, attending MS Teams meetings! As a legal adviser, my role is primarily risk mitigation. This involves advising the Fugro business on commercial contracts with clients, partners, subcontractors and suppliers, both before and after they are signed. As well as having to read a lot of documents, my role involves many internal and external meetings, where I advise the business, negotiate contracts and deal with ongoing client matters. Before lockdown, I often travelled within the UK and Europe to other Fugro and client offices for face-to-face meetings, but now I’m purely home-based. The downside of this new way of working is that tasks are very condensed and sometimes now I attend multiple client meetings a day with little time in between, which squeezes preparation time.

Are there any projects which you’re particularly proud to have been a part of?
In recent years, Fugro’s offshore business has diversified away from oil and gas to supporting the offshore wind industry. During my eight years at Fugro, I’ve worked on contracts with many renewable clients through our ground investigations and surveys for wind farms. This new industry has required new contracts and contracting practices and I am proud of the way that the industry has responded to develop contracts to balance and allocate the risks involved. It is satisfying to see that some of the wind farms where I advised on the contracts for Fugro’s early ground investigations are now being constructed. It is nice to see that the process produces tangible results in the form of renewable energy projects.

What are the most challenging aspects of your role?
As Fugro covers such a range of work, including geotechnical and geophysical investigations for offshore and onshore work supporting major infrastructure projects, as well as marine construction, metocean and consultancy services, the main challenge is dealing with the different contracts, risks and issues that arise across such a diverse workload. This often means jumping from one thing to another, but the upside is that it is never boring.

What AGS Working Group(s) are you a Member of and what are your current focuses?
I am a member of the Loss Prevention Working Group (LPWG). This parallels my role in Fugro, as it is focused on risk mitigation. The LPWG’s role is to advise members on matters related to the risk that may affect the work they do, and balance the contractual risk fairly between clients and contractors and consultants. To do this, we keep abreast of current issues that affect our industry, including legislation, case law and the publication of new codes and standards, in addition to sharing our own experiences as industry professionals. We then provide advice and support to the AGS through published guidance and alerts, magazine articles and, more recently, through our seminars and webinars on risk mitigation.

What do you enjoy most about being an AGS Member?
I enjoy the discussions at the LPWG meetings, as the group has a range of members from around the geotechnical industry, representing clients, contractors, and consultants ranging from individual specialists to large companies, and also the lawyers and insurers who provide vital support. This cross section of perspectives means we have lively discussions which we can then consolidate into useful guidance, which we publish to help our colleagues across the AGS.

What do you find beneficial about being an AGS Member?
In my role as Fugro’s legal adviser, I find the publications and papers provided by the LPWG on commercial risk mitigation issues helpful as they provide a good resource for guidance on the risks and concerns which affect professionals working in the industry. Sharing these papers with my colleagues helps provide a firm understanding of commercial risks and how to address them. These resources are mirrored by similar resources which are provided by other groups within the AGS to support members in other professional and technical aspects of their business, and I think the industry as a whole benefits from this pooling of knowledge and sharing of expertise.

Why do you feel the AGS is important to the industry?
I think the AGS helps at all levels because both experienced practitioners and young professionals benefit from the range of resources and support provided by the AGS. Young geotechnical and environmental engineers and other specialists should be encouraged by employers such as Fugro to seek out and use the guidance available as it is certainly helps their careers. In addition, experienced professionals who come across a new issue where they need guidance or reassurance can similarly benefit. The chances are that someone else has encountered and overcome the same issue before and help is available.

What changes would you like to see implemented in the geotechnical industry?
With my focus on contractual matters, particularly for onshore infrastructure work, I would like to see more development on the production of bespoke contracts that recognise that geotechnical ground investigations and reporting are somewhere between “Works” and “Services”. Obviously the ICC Ground Investigation conditions are developed for this purpose but, increasingly often, UK onshore clients or their advisers seek to adapt other forms of contract designed for consultancy or construction to use on ground investigations. The problem with this is that the risks are quite different and therefore not properly addressed in these other standard contracts. This effectively forces the parties to negotiate their positions on the key risks from scratch on every project, which takes time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere. I would like to see more consensus across the industry to address this issue.