Company Report: Waterman Group
Leading engineering and environmental operations Waterman Group is at the cutting edge of environmental consultancy – resulting in exciting initiatives that could go some way to healing the world go some way to healing the world

Cambridgeshire Waste

Synthetic Fuel Plant, Ireland

Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne

Waterman Group plc is an international engineering and environmental company providing multi-disciplinary consultancy services to the property, infrastructure, energy and environmental markets around the world.

As the company text reveals, the firm was founded in London in 1952, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1988 and has developed into a leading consultancy group with offices in 15 countries.

The group provides a full range of services from planning and design through to implementation and maintenance, allowing it to achieve a growing workload in diverse markets worldwide.

Director Joe Morris is in charge of the renewable energies under waste and carbon management and has a pivotal role in the firm’s international affairs. Currently he is helping one of the Chinese government’s authorities as a technical advisor for a large thermal incineration project. “It’s new in so far as we’re trying to combine biogas from landfill as the fuel for the incineration so we’re trying to reduce the fossil content of the fuel for the incineration and waste,” says Morris.

A GLOBAL BASIS
As he points out, the firm operates on a global basis, interaction with Australia being key; the Australian side of the operation has won green business of the year awards. The company also goes through the likes of Belgium, China and India. The firm has always done large power projects in India and that will continue in conjunction with the large turnkey operators like Siemens. In Kazakhstan, work is coming forward on a large residential and regeneration project, Poland sees the firm go into renewable on a big scale and is supported by the EU. Waterman has also been in Russia for nearly 15 years, with design licenses there. “We are looking at three very interesting projects in renewable fuels taking forestry wood for biomass and generating heating and fuel for a local community,” says Morris.

The concern in the sector, as with many sectors, is the lack of insentivisation in the education system to develop people through the systems into the relevant industries. “Two or three years ago we saw a significant reduction in engineering intake moving towards banking, accountancy where there was a perception of monetary issues rather than long-term sustainability issues,” says Morris.

It points to a need for such insentivisation as to how society looks at engineering. “The prowess of the engineer used to be significant in the social hierarchy, now that social recognition is no longer there,” says Morris. “In China, engineering is starting to become a preferred discipline; the country is moving engineering up the social aspect.”

Because the company is global and has a good foundation in energy and the environment it can look at new technologies for clients in terms of bringing them to market in the UK, Europe or on the world stage. “If you look back at all the discussions on environment, Al Gore said efficiency is the first renewable. He’s not far from the mark,” says Morris. “If we judge projects on efficiency terms we’ll save carbon as a byproduct.” An exciting development for the firm is that it is involved with the first synthetic diesel plant operating in Ireland which is taking plastic bags that can’t be recycled and converting them into synthetic diesel to be put into cars - without modification to the engine.

KEEPING THINGS INNOVATIVE
It is firms like these that truly make a difference in the world, and the way such firms stay ahead of their competition is through innovation. “The difficulty of keeping ahead of the competition in global terms is keeping it innovative,” says Morris. However, the firm has a research department dedicated to looking at the more cutting edge technologies that aren’t ready for the market just yet and may need three or four years of gestation. “If you look at the gestation curves of wind and solar for example, you will see they’re on a five to eight year cycle from initial concept to commerciality and those curves are similar whatever project you choose,” says Morris.

The future is critical in and around the industry. “We’ve got to stop ramming carbon down people’s throats,” he continues. “So we need to look at efficiency. If you consider the national health and the resources it uses, 60 percent of its procurement process is the carbon profiling for the NHS; if you can change the dynamics of the procurement pipeline to being more carbon friendly when you purchase products then you have got an opportunity to reduce 60 percent of emissions from the NHS,” he adds. This involves looking at whole carbon costs so that the carbon product can be a low carbon profile. “If they were to change their procurement profiling, we can immediately reduce down the carbon emissions that a large industry accommodates.”

And with the progress being made by the firm, the industry and environment are surely set for discernable progress.

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