Environmental & Geotechnical Services

The development and redevelopment of land automatically triggers the need to negotiate a number of statutory consents and requirements, for instance the need to obtain planning permission.  However, as part of the process of determining the site’s suitability for a particular use and the liability likely to accrue due to acquisition of the land, a number of other issues usually need to be resolved.

Where sites are being redeveloped the effects of previous activities may cause the site to be construed as Contaminated Land.  In this case additional considerations apply and the regulatory authorities will need to be satisfied that any contamination will not pose unacceptable risk to the proposed use of the site or the surrounding ground and surface waters. Sladen Associates are used to addressing these issues and therefore, depending on the nature of the case, can implement a variety of measures:

• ‘Phase 1’ Geo-environmental desk study reports
• Mining Risk Assessments
• Ground Investigations
• Assessment of slope stability and mining subsidence.
• Pre-Acquisition Audits to determine potential liabilities.
• Numerical Modelling of Geotechnical and Geo-environmental processes
• Human Health and Controlled Waters Risk Assessments
• Environmental Assessments where required to support planning proposals.
• Materials management plans and waste management
• Remediation design and implementation to ameliorate site conditions sufficiently to support the proposed use for the site and reduce risks of off-site contamination migration.

Sladen Associates usually carry out such work on a staged basis so that costs are closely controlled and future effort is concentrated on any identified problem.

The development process often involves interactions with a variety of Regulatory Authorities which can have a major influence on the project. The staff have a broad experience dealing with these organisations throughout the country and can present them with the required information in the appropriate form.