Environmental incident management

24/7 consultancy-led response for a wide range of spills, pollutants, and environmental incidents.

Minimise damage to the environment, reduce downtime, and the impact of fines with our consultancy-led response.

We respond quickly in the event of an environmental incident, to reduce the impact on the environment and your operations, through a turn-key solution from containment to remediation.

Contact our experts

Every minute counts!

Communication and speed are critical in the golden hour following an environmental incident. Our incident commanders take control of the site and establish a strategy to manage the incident.

When an environmental incident occurs, it is overwhelming as it isn’t part of your day job. But it is ours. Let us take control of the situation.

We will manage the environmental incident effectively and efficiently through the full lifecycle including response, site investigation and remediation, whether working for commercial organisations, regulators, or insurers.

We respond to incidents involving any of these substances

In any of these locations

Inland (terrestrial)

Above and below ground.

Inland (aquatic)

Lakes, rivers, streams.

Marine

Ports, harbours, coastal.

Features

24/7 incident advisors, all qualified chemists and DGSA
On site incident management coordinating and managing short- and medium-term actions.
Accredited by the UK and Ireland Spill Association.
Consultancy expertise to manage end to end from initial response to remediation.
Over 10,000 incidents managed where our clients have not been prosecuted for causing pollution where we carried out the initial response.
Extensive insurance experience covering environmental claims management for a range of environmental incidents relating to property, motor, liability, agriculture, and major & complex loss policies.

24/7

Incident management from qualified chemists and DGSA advisors available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

End-to-end

Full end-to-end capability from initial response, containment, investigation and monitoring to remediation and habitat restoration.

Award-winning

UK and Ireland Spill Association best inland and marine responders 2022.

Extensive network

Extensive approved subcontractor network across the UK and Ireland providing access to preferential turnaround times and rates.

Regulatory experience

Ex-environmental regulators from the EA, NRW, SEPA and NIEA. Our experience informs us how to respond, work with regulators and avoid enforcement for our clients.

Sustainability

When faced with contaminated soils, groundwater, or building structures there are often multiple remediation options available to achieve the end goal of acceptable risk to identified receptors.

Options may be driven by the severity of contamination, the environmental setting, the accessibility of contamination, timescales, regulatory pressure, and the end target for the remediation. More recently, EA guidance has required that the sustainability of a remedial solution also be considered as part of the options appraisal.

Our expert consultants can offer you a range of remediation options using our sustainability calculator to help you meet your budgetary and sustainability commitments.

The tool estimates the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of any project, and has been developed to internationally recognised current GHG assessment standards utilising best-practice data sources.

Carbon emissions are initially estimated during the design phase of a remediation project. Then, throughout implementation of the project, specific data can be collected and verified, allowing for the exact carbon savings to be reported.

Our sustainable solutions

We have a bespoke range of advanced sustainable remediation systems designed in-house to offer performance, quality, and value.

Process

All environmental incidents follow the same process and are underpinned by speed of reaction coupled with clear, authoritative communication.

Data enables us to optimise our strategy through time. We collect both chemical and physical data, robust soil information, consistent groundwater monitoring, daily SCAT and surface water quality sampling and testing, all managed by dedicated data handlers.

Short term: Focus on ‘control’

Emergency response
Contain, minimise, and monitor impacts
Establish baseline
Conceptual model
Investigation
Planning/enabling/CDM

Containment

We employ a range of equipment and tactics to contain pollutants including:

Booms
Absorbents
Skimmers
Flood barriers
Pipe dams

Investigation and monitoring

We employ a range of techniques to investigate and confirm the extent of contamination including:

Drilling
Hand augers
Soil logging
Gas and groundwater monitoring well installations
On-site field screening (e.g. PID, gas analyser)
Groundwater monitoring
Surface water monitoring
Shoreline Clean-up Assessment Technique (SCAT) Surveys
Ecology surveys
Ecological watching briefs
Drone surveys

Medium term: Focus on ‘removing pollutant’

Ongoing containment
Further investigation
Environmental risk assessment
Options appraisal
Remediation strategy
Remediation

Ongoing containment

This phase involves removal as a result of continued containment measures or via remediation which we achieve by:

Continued data collection
Further investigation
Refining the conceptual model
Environmental risk assessment
Options appraisal
Reporting
Agreement with stakeholders

Through this phase we see a clear reduction in spread and thickness of pollution.

Long term: Focus on ‘confirming success’

Remediation monitoring
Meeting remediation targets (e.g. established through DQRA)
Habitat restoration
Verification
Closure

The objective of this phase is to return the site to an agreed pre-incident condition:

Excavation and reinstatement as a means to mitigate immediate risks
Verification plan
Habitat restoration plan [link to habitat restoration page]
Monitored natural attenuation to address longer term risks
- Groundwater sampling
- Surface water quality sampling and testing
Ecology and habitat monitoring
- Terrestrial
- Aquatic
- Marine
Waste management, materials management plans

Key to the success of the strategy is communication between stakeholders including the client, advisers, landowners, regulators, and community groups.

“It was really comforting to see how well it was managed, they took control of the site, took control of what the remediation process should be and the people we were dealing with were absolutely fantastic. The site reports are very detailed, all the content we require is there. The expertise has been phenomenal, from the ground support to the ecologists to the people taking the samples, the expertise within the group is really vast which is fantastic.”

Marc Binney, DB Cargo

Your environmental risk reduction partner, ensuring the safety of your people, property, reputation and the environment

Our experts are on hand to provide tailored investigation, consultancy, response and remediation services to help you balance commercial objectives and environmental compliance.