SuDS, the acronym everyone is talking about.
Smart planning for sustainable urban drainage system features, has largely become the new focus for successful designs. SuDS systems can work on practically any scale; from plot-level components like rainwater harvesting and green roofs, to very large schemes that include several SuDS systems working together.
2021’s key focus saw GreenBlue discuss topical issues when ‘Designing for Successful SuDS’. We have published blogs, case studies and organised events such as our ‘Festival of Ideas’ webinar, seeing a positive uptake of over 250 attendees.
It is always a privilege to collaborate with key speakers within the SuDS industry, working with professionals to detail methods used and highlighting the importance of early insights across disciplines.
Let’s find out more about our webinar speakers:
Faye Gennard, a chartered civil engineer with over 10 years’ experience within the water sector. Faye is enthused to recently become the founder of Rennard Consulting Limited, a drainage consultancy that specialises in planning and design, working with her clients to make every drop count. Faye humours the fact that the ‘drowned rat look is every drainage engineers fashion statement, when accessing a site at the best time to do so, in the rain!’ Being a mother herself, Faye describes the importance of educating our next generation on how to protect our world.
Getting your strategy right in early planning processes is one of the most crucial components, drainage can be so much more than just pipes in the ground.
Faye Gennard, Rennard Consulting Limited
Jo Bradley, recently joined the non-for-project organisation, Stormwater Shepherds and is passionate about reducing pollution from urban services including microplastics and plastic litter. Jo takes us on a journey through the SuDS Manual on water quality, looking at the risks each development site holds for pollution. We learn that each type of urban surface is assigned a pollution hazard index, giving you the mathematical pollution mitigation indices.
It is essential that everyone considers ground water protection in their SuDS designs. Let’s make our SuDS features big enough, designed well and maintained.
Jo Bradley, Stormwater Shepherds
Kevin Barton, an award winning Landscape Architect and Director of Robert Bray Associates, working on projects that fuse together water, people, place and wildlife. Kevin enjoys creating exciting dynamic and playful landscapes that come to life when it rains. Kevin establishes how the clean, low pollutant, oxygenated water that falls from the sky is a precious resource and can be used to create great places.
Lets’ adopt a mind shift from treating rain as a problem to be solved, to seeing it as an opportunity.
Kevin Barton, Robert Bray Associates
Anthony McCloy, Managing Director of McCloy Consulting. Anthony provides specialist service in sustainable drainage, flood risk and contaminated land, contributing to national policy and guidance. Anthony’s presentation demonstrates Hydraulic analysis to enable successful schemes.
GreenBlue were delighted to work alongside McCloy Consulting last year on the publication; Hydraulic Modelling Guidance using MicroDrainage and we are also pleased to launch a further publication detailing how to use the Causeway Flow Software for the same purpose. Future planning and designs of sustainable urban drainage solutions will hugely benefit; in particular the modelling workflows for the GreenBlue Urban SuDS solutions HydroPlanter and ArborFlow.
This guide highlights approaches needed to calculate for inflow, representing interception loss, modelling outflow and the steps needed to fully incorporate a bioretention rain garden and tree pit solution.
Let’s avoid missed opportunities and have maximum benefits, producing high-performance infrastructure.
Anthony McCloy, McCloy Consulting
SuDS features do not have to be isolated and can work best when connected, allowing both water and wildlife to move seamlessly through an urban environment to a more rural surrounding. Drainage should always take precedence, using those natural flow paths to enable your designs to work with water, as opposed to it becoming a constant battle. Our Festival of Ideas webinar has been one of our most popular subjects to date and an abundance of attraction and questions were received from various industry disciplines. The Q&A session was fruitful, with questions surrounding the SAB Movement in Wales, pollutant removal from SuDS solutions, how they are maintained and how we can work more closely with all sectors allowing developers and clients to achieve a high-quality SuDS scheme.
GreenBlue is proud to be involved within the Industry commitment to educating our professional colleagues, alongside key player organisations such as The Landscape Institute, CIRIA, and Green Infrastructure Partnership. We are Inspired spread the word by offering free online CPD’s regarding ‘Urban Tree Planting Through Water Sensitive Designs’ and ‘Mitigating Climate Change.’
Collaboration is key! Getting the designs right from the start, convincing the developers on the return on investment and ensuring that quality design-led schemes are implemented for us all to enjoy for years to come.
We look forward to welcoming Kenton Rogers from Treeconomics and Keith Scare from Barcham Trees for our next dedicated webinar: A Guide to the Carbon Storage Potential of Tree Species – Wednesday 17th February 2021, 10:00AM.
