RSK wins Brownfield Briefing award
RSK has won the Brownfield Briefing award for Best Public Participation for its remediation project at St Mary’s Park in Maidenhead, UK.
RSK’s David Jacob received the award from BBC presenter Justin Rowlatt at last night’s award ceremony at the Victoria Park Plaza Hotel in London.
David says, “I’m delighted that we won this award because it recognises the amount of effort we made in interacting with the public on this project. The judges said it was a unanimous decision because of the way we were able to dispel the myth that remediation can be dangerous to local residents. What made this project stand out was that we were not hiding behind closed doors and we were not afraid to open the site to the public.”
RSK’s submission described the remediation of St Mary’s Park and the challenge of allaying the fears of the local community, which was already strongly opposed to the development when planning permission was granted in 2009.The approach taken by RSK and McArdle, the main contractor, was to openly share information throughout the remediation process with activities such as a manned drop-in centre, a 24-hour hotline, monthly residents’ meetings and an open-door policy on site tours.
“Winning this award shows the level of commitment from the team at St Mary’s Park to achieving the right outcome for the client, the community and RSK,” says David.
“I also want to thank Stella Whyte from RSK’s communication services who helped us prepare the award submission.
“I spoke at the Brownfield Briefing conference yesterday afternoon and Stella and her team had also helped tremendously with the presentation, which looked really polished and prompted very positive feedback.”
This is the third Brownfield Briefing award that RSK has won, having won in the Best Use of a Single Remediation Technique category last year and Best Conceptual Design in 2007.
RSK’s communication services has a track record of supporting its clients to win accolades such as this. It helped Shell Global Solutions win the Award for Innovation and Excellence from the Institution of Chemical Engineers and World Oil magazine’s Innovative Thinkers award.
