NICOLE E-News June 2016

NICOLE E-News June 2016

NICOLE: Spring Workshop 2016 : Vienna

«Turning failure into success – 
What can we learn when remediation does not go as planned»

15 – 17 June 2016, Vienna, Austria
 

There is continuous effort needed to manage land contamination in an effective way, and hence to find ways to optimize the current ways of working. Often, workshops and conferences try to find the solutions in presenting success cases as templates to replicate. Yet, there are a number of remediation projects not meeting the various stakeholders expectations and thus requiring new thinking to achieve the outcome expected. Owing to the level of trust NICOLE’s members have built over time among themselves, it seems possible to have open discussions around projects having encountered obstacles on their way to completion and to learn from these. Therefore the decision was taken to hold a workshop on the non-successes, and even on the failures or on “what goes wrong” and what we can learn from this for the next project or the future.

The first topic to deal with is the definition of “failure” in the context of remediation projects. During the workshop, the results of a questionnaire (recently sent around) will be communicated, together with experiences out of other businesses (lawyers, chemical production,…). As a first approach, failures can be technical, strategical, due to environmental or regulatory boundary conditions etc. 

Examples are: exceeding the budget, disappointing the stakeholders, application of suboptimal or even “wrong” technology, Health & Safety requirements or remediation goals may be finally met, but not within the expected time frame.

Preceding the workshop proper, NICOLE’s various Working Groups and Subgroups will have their semi-annual meetings on 15 June.

Please click the following links to find out more about the workshop:
– To see the Working Group program of 15 June, click here!
– To see the Workshop program 16 and 17 June, click here!
– To see the participant list as of 8 June 2016, click here!

Message from Steve Wallace

To celebrate NICOLE’s 20 year anniversary, we have invited a number of honorary guests that have been with us since NICOLE’s early days. Steven Wallace is a former chairman of NICOLE and will be speaking during the 20th Anniversary workshop, from 2-4 November in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

I was chairman of NICOLE from 2003 to 2004.  During that time I was Head of Environment at National Grid Property in the UK, where I was responsible for the management of a portfolio of around 1000 ex-gasworks sites.  At that time, much of the effort in NICOLE was associated with developing and encouraging an appropriate risk based approach to the assessment of potentially contaminated sites and then ensuring that the regulatory environment encouraged and supported the risk based approach and the development and delivery of treatment technologies, as opposed to dig and dump, as the preferred approach to remediation.

Since then, I have had roles that covered wider environmental policy, climate change and then Circular Economy (CE).   The CE approach to resource use stems from the self-evident fact that we live on a planet with finite resources coupled with the observation that the ever growing human population is using resources at a rate that cannot be sustained.  As resource scarcity begins to bite, it will be the poorest and least fortunate amongst us that will be hardest hit. 

To continue reading, please click here.

Dr. Steve Wallace
Wallace Environmental Ltd
Stevewallace2@ntlworld.com

Update for Sustainable Remediation Working Group – SRWG

NICOLE is an associated partner of the Interred project ReSite together with Common Forum and SuRF- Italy. Hans Slenders as the chair of SRWG will take part on behalf of NICOLE in the meeting. This project focuses on sustainable redevelopment in Middel and Eastern Europe. There will be 11 pilot sites included in the program. The project aims to develop a tool for Brownfield redevelopment and to exchange experiences and educate the public sector. The project will run for 3 years. 

Further, Hans Slenders participated in the Sustainable Remediation Conference in Montreal, Canada, partly on behalf of the SRWG of NICOLE.
 
During this conference the International Sustainable Remediation Alliance (ISRA) was kicked off. This is an alliance between all the SuRFs worldwide and NICOLE. The SG supports this idea of an international alliance. It is fully inline with the objectives and mission of NICOLE.
 
Some additional information on INTERNATIONAL SURF GROUPS AND PARTNERS.
The chairs of the international Sustainable Remediation Forums (SURF) and associated partners meet on a quarterly basis mainly by teleconference with the aim to share progress and learning amongst the different networks and develop opportunities for collaboration. It is hoped that by communicating on a regular basis it will help raise the awareness of the work that each group is undertaking in their different countries and help drive consistency between the different initiatives where appropriate.

NETWORKS:
The current groups represented are:

– SuRF- UK represented by Jonathan Smith www.claire.co.uk/surfuk
– SuRF US represented by Maile Smith www.sustainableremediation.org
– SuRF Canada represented by Stella Karnis www.surfcanada.org
– SuRF Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) represented by Garry Smith http://landandgroundwater.com/story/sustainable-remediation-forum-for-australia-and-new-zealand
– SuRF Netherlands represented by Laurent Bakker and Hans Slenders www.surf-nl.com
– SuRF Italy represented by Claudio Albano www.surfitaly.it
– SuRF Brazil represented by James Henderson
– SuRF Taiwan represented by Colin S. Chen www.surf-taiwan.org.tw
– SuRF Colombia represented by Alfonso Rodriguez http://surfcolombia.org/
– NICOLE Sustainable Remediation Working Group represented by Laurent Bakker and Hans Slenders http://www.nicole.org/documenten/2/Sustainable%20Remediation%20WG.html
– China represented by Mengfang Chen
– Japan represented by Ryuzo Tazawa
 
SRWG will not meet during the Vienna workshop, but will continue it’s meeting convene again in Amsterdam during the fall workshop in November! There will be a short update on the SRWG by Laurent Bakker during the meeting of the Regulatory Working Group on Wednesday. 

   

Welcome to our new member

A very warm welcome to our new member T.E. Laboratories Ltd!

T.E.Laboratories was formed in 1991 initially specializing in the analysis and treatment of fuel. Since then the company has gone from strength to strength through a series of diversifications of their core business. They now boast a first-class ISO 17025 accredited Environmental Laboratory, a Chemical Manufacturing Laboratory, a transformer oil lab and a condition monitoring oil lab. TelLab have an expanding R&D department which has both co-ordinated and collaborated in 9 FP7 and 3 H2020 projects, focusing on environmental research including water, soil and air.
 
For more information please visit their website.

Events

Contaminated Sites 2016

12 – 13 September 2016, Hotel Bôrik in Bratislava, Slovak Republic

For more information, please take a look at the enclosed invitation.
10th International Seminar on Remediation and Revitalization of Contaminated Sites 2016

28 – 30 September 2016, São Paulo, Brazil

The Seminar brings together national and international experts, members of the public and private sector to discuss technologies, concepts of remediation, management brownfields and revitalization of contaminated sites.
Contamination Expo Series 2016

12 – 13 October 2016, ExCeL London, United Kingdom

The contamination Expo Series 2016 is the UK’s leading event for land contamination professionals to find innovative solutions and technology. 

For more information , please visit their website.

NICOLE Fall Workshop 2016

 2- 4 November 2016, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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