Cognition and project consultants, Leap Environmental were awarded Best Project Closure/Verification process at this year's Brownfield Briefing Awards.

The award was for work carried out in remediating eighteen gardens under Part 2A of The Environmental Protection Act 1990 on behalf of Camden Borough Council. The gardens had become contaminated with heavy metals and PAHs as a result of historic pollution from a former electroplating works that occupied the site between the 1960s and 1980s.

Contaminated soil from the surface of the gardens was excavated and replaced with clean soil; each resident also agreed their specific reinstatement requirements with Cognition. Access was limited with soil having to be dug by hand and removed through properties or openings cut into garden walls.

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The success of the project resulted from close collaboration between client, consultant, contractor and the residents and successfully brought to a close three decades of concern for stakeholders.

The project was also able to deliver significant project savings benefitting central government, the local authority, residents, and the environment. This was achieved in part by the instantaneous measurements of soil contamination carried out using a hand held XRF analyser. The monitoring enabled large amounts of data to be quickly assimilated across the gardens and target deeper excavations to only those zones where absolutely necessary. This selective digging reduced project costs from a projected £1m to £250k by reducing disposal volumes from 2000m3 to <600m3.

www.brownfieldbriefing.com/content/2012-winners

(CD/JP)