Wee Notes & Breaking News

Welcome to Alisha

Some news, Alisha joined us earlier this year from the University of St Andrews where she studied Geology. Hailing from Dundee she has made the trip west and south to settle in the south side of Glasgow and so far Alisha has got involved in desk top studies, setting out of fieldworks, the description and assessment of soils for engineering purposes and the initial inputs for flood risk assessment (all while undertaking our onboarding programme and personalised in-house training. Its a full programme but she is still smiling.

At Terrenus, we thrive under a cross function team approach which sees our staff undertaking a wide variety of project types, under the tutelage of Seniors, to become what we regard as rounded professionals with skills in technical matters, word craft and project management amongst many other things. For us, this provides an excellent spring-board as our staff move towards some form of specialism. It is one of the fundamentals of our company culture. 

Update on EASR

Many of you will already know about the changes to Environmental Authorisations in Scotland but a wee update is, I think, in order.

Many environmental maters have now come under the new Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR) since November 2025. The aim of the EASR integrated framework is to streamline the regulation of activities in order to simplify compliance and support sustainable resource use. The EASR amends or replaces a number of different regulations. These include the following amongst others: 

• The Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (CAR) 

• Pollution Prevention & Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (PPC) 

• The Waste Management Licensing (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (including exemptions) 

The new EASR are issued in the form of permits, registrations, notifications, or through compliance with General Binding Rules (GBRs).  

Focusing on the old Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations the new EASR lean on the SEPA publications WAT-G-023 and R-WAT-F2 amongst others which form the backbone of any new registrations with the aim to achieve a ‘Good Practice’ standard. Whilst the application charges are generally modest, working your way through the labyrinth of standards and guidelines in order to achieve a robust design is where Terrenus can assist. Feel free to give me a call to discuss.

Focus on Edwina Dominic

At Terrenus we are always happy to deliver Good News and today I want to tell you about Edwina Dominic. Edwina joined us in 2022 after graduating from Glasgow University in Environmental Science & Sustainability. As with all our staff, we favour developing a wide range of capabilities in your early career so much so that Edwina now has professional experience and capability in engineering geology including major earthworks and settlement analysis in Bishopton, water engineering including detailed hydraulic modelling using QGIS and HEC-RAS and contaminated land risk assessment involving a wide range of site investigation work, soil and water laboratory assessment and report writing. 

Edwina is a capable and motivated person and we were very pleased to see her promoted to our consultant band within the company earlier this month. At this level she will be responsible for many more elements of the assessment, design and reporting elements of our projects and will refine her specialisms as she develops her career.

Currently Edwina is visiting her family in Malaysia although she has continued to put in a solid day’s work by taking her computer with her. Her now Scots accent has be marked upon by her folks. 

Social Bite - food for thought

Many of you will know of the good work carried out by Social Bite throughout Scotland and beyond and Terrenus has over the past years made a contribution to their work prior to Christmas. Today I got a message from the Social Bite team explaining some of their numbers - here are a few during last year:

• Over 310,000 meals and gifts. 
• Over 254,000 free meals provided
• 960 hot Christmas dinners.

All very good but one comment by a recipient manager from a group in Dundee caught by eye, “it was especially lovely to see families enjoy a meal together and enjoy the day”

Our compliments to all the workers and volunteers who put in the hard shifts over the festive season and who continue to do so even in the cold grey days of January.