«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!

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

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.