21 October 2016
Shoreham Port and their environment consultants, Arcadis, have won a top award for the way they investigated and responded to an obnoxious odour and oil seepage in the sea at Portslade Beach. The Award, for the ‘Best Scoping or Operation of a Site Investigation’ was presented to Tony Parker, Director of Engineering at Shoreham Port and George Flower, Technical Director at Arcadis at a prestigious awards ceremony in London last week.
The mysterious smell and oil seepage were discovered to be caused by an oily substance seeping out onto the beach at extreme low water and this was discovered to have originated from the giant coal gas works that once occupied the Portslade end of the Port.
Tony Parker commented “We had a splendid evening with great company and conversation - time seemed to fly by. Winning the award is an immense achievement when you consider the quality of the other submissions on the night and, of course, it reflects the expertise, professionalism and diligence with which the whole site investigation was carried out.
Tony continued “Winning the award also helps demonstrate to our stakeholders, especially local residents, visitors to the beach and the health and environment regulators, that the Port takes environmental issues extremely seriously and is doing everything reasonably possible to resolve the oil seepage issue.”
George Flower commented “The whole team at Arcadis is immensely proud of this award as it represents the recognition of the huge amount of hard work and professional expertise that went into the project. The Brownfield Briefing Awards is a prestigious event showcasing the very best in contaminated land remediation throughout the UK each year and the judges said that our site investigation is one of the best they have ever seen since the event started over ten years ago. It doesn’t get much better than that!”
The Brownfield Briefing Awards have become the flagship event for the land remediation industry and to win an award is one of the highest industry accolades that a company can receive. The Awards bring together brownfield consultants, contractors, clients and stakeholders involved in a broad range of innovative projects and developments around the UK.