Regulatory Forms

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Published: February 04, 2020

When site assessments confirm the presence of contaminants in the soil/groundwater, there are often requirements to submit the results to regulators.  Whether in Alberta, British Columbia, or Saskatchewan, each province has their own notification document(s) that require completion and submission to a regulatory body.  In our February health and safety meeting, we presented a high-level overview of each province’s notification process and who, as a designated professional, can sign the documents.  Continued learning is always at the forefront for all staff at Nichols. – D. Nuell

Ground Disturbance

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Published: January 07, 2020

Ground disturbance (GD) – it’s what we do!

There is no way around it... to clean up the earth we need to dig deep and disturb the ground.  Of course, this needs to be done with caution given the myriad of buried infrastructure that we could encounter at any given site.  That is why at today’s HSE meeting, we focused on an in-depth review of best practices with respect to GD.  At the end of the day, the number-one priority with all project work involving GD is to ensure we have taken all steps to a) eliminate the risk of damaging buried infrastructure and b) complete the task at hand without incident.  The first and most basic step is reaching out to your local One Call authority (at http://albertaonecall.com/ in AB), which is a free service, to locate all public utility lines at your site.  Of course, there are many other resources available to us to help eliminate the risk associated with GD and we even added a few new ones to our internal GD policy that came up through our open discussion today.  That’s the goal: do the job, do it well, and do it without incident – and in our line of work, GD planning is essential to realizing this goal!  B. Rakewich

In Situ Remediation - B. Rakewich

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Published: November 07, 2019

The site evaluation process is of the utmost importance when it comes to designing an in situ remedial program.  Outside of identifying your contaminants of concern, having a thorough understanding of plume dynamics, soil lithology, groundwater chemistry, hydraulic conductivity, and site infrastructure are key components that need to be considered during the evaluation process.

A thorough site evaluation will help narrow down your amendment selection, which should almost always be vetted through a bench and/or pilot study.  Once you have confidence that your site is a solid candidate for in situ remediation, the remedial program can be tailor-made specifically to the site.  Multiple amendment delivery technologies (which can be applied simultaneously) should always be considered as part of the design phase, which will ultimately help reach the remedial end points established for a site.  Lastly, real-time monitoring needs to be in place during amendment delivery to document the radius of influence and reactivity of an amendment – and a well thought-out monitoring/sampling program after amendment delivery will provide you with the opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the in situ remedial program.  We all want to have successful project completion, so why wouldn’t we take the time to properly evaluate our site and design an in situ remedial program that will give us the best possible outcome?

The Value of Communication - L. Baer

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Published: October 07, 2019

Even the best due diligence practices and environmental modelling software cannot always prepare one for actual field-level remediation programs.  During our monthly safety meeting, we reviewed a project showcase of a remedial excavation program where the amount of contaminated material nearly doubled from not one but two environmental consultants’ initial estimates.  One lesson we learn from these kinds of projects is that constant communication with your client is the key to success!

Thinking Outside of the Box - T. Anderson

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Published: September 04, 2019

Showcased at today’s monthly H&S meeting was a rather exciting project being co-headed by Nichols and another consulting firm that specializes in phytoremediation.  Nichols has been working closely with other consultants, the regulator, and our client through the course of this project to help develop a specialized solution for the site.  We’ve also been fortunate enough to work with academic leaders in the field of phytoremediation.  Sorry for the vague details but we promise it will be worth the wait!  In the interim, we were able to share the variety of assessment tools that have been implemented to help characterize the site, which include almost everything in our tool belt; drone imagery, groundwater assessment, soil assessment – and even running statistics and generating 3D models to help visualize what is happening.  We appreciate being able to apply our innovation and look forward to the outcome on this project.

Leadership for Safety Excellence - B. Rakewich

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Published: June 03, 2019

At our monthly Health and Safety meeting today, we discussed 'Leadership for Safety Excellence'. Here at Nichols the safety of our employees and those around us is everyone’s responsibility. We believe in training all of our staff to be leaders when it comes to safety. A critical part of this training is identifying hazards to assess the foreseeability of a potential incident – from which we can then collaborate to establish procedures to prevent an incident.

Safety is one of the pillars of our corporate philosophy, which was reaffirmed through our discussion today!