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Our move into the University of Nottingham Innovation Park in September 2011 marks a new chapter in LQM’s history. LQM has become known for our ability to take on and tackle the hardest problems in risk based contaminated land management. This stems from our ability to use the latest scientific findings coupled with our rare understanding of the various legal regimes to inform our risk assessments.
LQM was founded by the late Colin Ferguson and me in 1997 to provide a vehicle for employing a highly skilled, highly motivated team to deliver cutting edge solutions to unique, difficult and first-time problems principally relating to the investigation, characterisation, assessment and remediation of contaminated land.
Since then LQM has forged a reputation for delivering high quality services and reports that have saved our clients very substantial sums of money in unnecessary delays in stakeholder approval or by demonstrating the lack of need for remediation.
We have also made sharing our knowledge and expertise a high priority. We do this by accepting invitations to speak at many seminars, conferences by EPUK, NewsEye International, SOBRA and others, SAGTA meetings, Contaminated Land Officer groups and the annual CIEH Standing Conference forum and more recently via webinars. We also deliver one of Europe’s most comprehensive short course programmes on all aspects of contaminated land. Our courses range from the introductory to the advanced master class and even extend to unscripted small group in house clinics with one of our highly skilled team. The team are regular contributors to the Nottingham masters in contaminated land management.
We are proud and seek to maintain our micro-enterprise status while at the same time revelling in working with others as and when the need arises. Long term partnerships include delivery of training and developing de facto industry standard Generic Assessment Criteria with the CIEH; delivering training to housebuilders with the NHBC and delivering several repeats of a series of courses on specific remediation technologies initially with FirstFaraday and its successors and in recent years with CL:AIRE.
Our occasional forays into expert witness and more regular peer review work keeps us sharp and up to date on both current practice and regulatory drivers across all the devolved administrations in the UK, including England, and elsewhere; notably Ireland, Jersey, South Africa, Hong Kong and China. We have enjoyed working on European projects such as EUGRIS and EuroDemo.
Many have worked for LQM over its thirteen years and some have been with us for a long time. All have left behind good memories and hopefully taken away useful experience. The present team is one of the strongest in both depth and breadth and one of my greatest pleasures is being in the office with them taking part in the general banter – be it about the latest development, current challenging project or what’s on the BBC website.
Paul Nathanail
Sir Colin Campbell Building, September 2011
Our service to you is based on many years of experience and we have an international reputation built on the successful implementation of projects.
In all our projects, the directors, management and staff of LQM are committed to offering you:
Land Quality Management Ltd (LQM) was set up in December 1997 by the late Professor Colin Ferguson and Dr Paul Nathanail. However, the group has a history dating back to 1991 when Colin Ferguson joined the Faculty of Environmental Studies at the Nottingham Trent University to form the Centre for Research into the Built Environment (CRBE).
Soon after CRBE was formed, Jacqui Marsh and Dr Ammar Abbachi joined to work with Colin on Department of the Environment (DOE) funded research into sampling strategies and human health risk assessment. The team quickly established the reputation for high quality relevant work that it contrives to have today. An influential paper on Ground Engineering was followed by a DOE CLR report on sampling strategies. However, it was the work on the Contaminated Land Exposure Assessment (CLEA) model that was to be the focus of the group’s work. The model was designed to produce guideline values for use by regulators and was the first such model to adopt a probabilistic approach.
In 1994 Dr Paul Bardos joined CRBE to head up the Waste and Soil Treatment Division. Paul came from Warren Spring Laboratory and brought with him Ian Martin. Dr Sabine Lorenz joined soon after to work on rhizosphere remediation of organic contaminants. High profile work included a review of soil remediation for the Royal Commission on Environmental protection, participation in the NATO CCMS study on remediation and in formulating the concept that resulted in CLAIRE. Paul now runs his own company – r3 Environmental while Ian works for the Environment Agency
Dr Naomi Earl joined in September 1994, initially to work on an EU-funded project examining the preservation of archaeological artifacts in contaminated soil, but subsequently specialising in human health exposure assessment. Naomi now works for a major environmental consultancy.
Dr Paul Nathanail joined in September 1994 to head up work in geoenvironmental engineering. He initiated the Masters in Contaminated Land Management that was set up as an MSc at Nottingham Trent but is now offered as an MRes at the University of Nottingham. Paul is the Managing Director of LQM and heads up Brownfield Regeneration within the University of Nottingham.
Dr Ken Westlake joined in 1997 to work on waste management projects and developed a varied workload, with a particular emphasis on DFID and World Bank projects. Ken now runs his own company – Westlake Associates.
However, changes in NTU personnel policies led to problems with retaining CRBE personnel and in 1997 Colin and Paul reluctantly felt that another vehicle was needed to take the work forward. That vehicle became Land Quality Management Ltd. Then, in October 1998, all CRBE staff moved to the University of Nottingham and split their time between University and LQM activities.
Unfortunately, Colin died after a long battle with cancer in 1999, but LQM has continued its work. Since then of course there have been numerous changes in the team and LQM have moved out of University premises to our current home nearby in Beeston
LQM Press was later established to publish specialist books and reports of interest to the contaminated land management and sustainable regeneration community.
LQM has worked throughout the UK, elsewhere in Europe (including Ireland, Slovakia, Kosovo, Cyprus) and the rest of the world (including South Africa, Hong Kong and Australia). We are partners in EC projects such as EUGRIS and EURODEMO. We welcome the opportunity to use our skills anywhere in the world and in particular to support disadvantaged communities.
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Quality Management Ltd.
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