Wee Notes & Breaking News

Off to site.

One of the prices of seniority in any organisation is that you reduce the opportunity to get out and do some of the things that drew you to the job in the first place. Some of my fondest memories at work were in the early days with a van going round the country organising and managing multiple site investigations. If you play your cards right you can use the travel as ‘downtime’ where you listen to the radio and more or less relax. True, the downside is that your office is the steamed up van on a wet day when your note book has turned to mush and the borehole location drawing looks like something regurgitated by the nearby cow but the pleasure is real none-the-less.

This week I have the chance to undertake a wee sojourn to Wigtownshire for a site walk over in preparation for a 2D fluvial hydraulic model. The development is for glamping pods on land which, presently, the SEPA Flood Map indicates possible flooding. Our hydraulic models are more accurate that the SEPA ones (due to them being site specific) and our aim is to allow the development to proceed safely, free from the risk of flooding and without increasing the risk elsewhere. Without our input the job will simply not go ahead although we still need our client to be flexible regarding the site layout - the motto is “get us involved even before you get the architect involved”. 

So, being somewhat rusty, today I am now getting briefed by our Jonny Simpson in the use of our survey staff which will allow us to ‘truth’ the local LiDAR dataset which will form the basis of our hydraulic model.

More of the site visit next week perhaps.