Better Environmental Impact Assessment: Enabling development value

Robert Slatcher
28 November 2014

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Despite increasing focus on work to assess the environmental impact of infrastructure, clients aren't always getting the best quality result or the value outcomes. Time for a rethink, says Robert Slatcher, principal consultant at Temple Group.

Once engineering feasibility and affordability have been confirmed, some of the most common risks to the successful implementation of infrastructure projects are environmental constraints, social acceptability and the support of statutory and non-statutory stakeholders.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a requirement for major projects in the UK and when carried out well, it can help to safely navigate these risks and add value to the project. 

"Whilst a total EIA reboot is not warranted, it is certainly time for a rethink. This article provides insights on how infrastructure clients can get more from EIA."

But more than a quarter of a century on from the first EIAs, the sheer number of them and cumulative years of experience in the profession is not necessarily leading to work of better quality and value to infrastructure clients. 

There are though good examples, so whilst a total EIA reboot is not warranted, it is certainly time for a rethink.   

A common pitfall is for Environmental Statements prepared in support of infrastructure consent applications to be considered as fulfilling the sole purpose of satisfying a prescribed list of application documents.

Rather the document should describe the process and outcomes of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). It is during the EIA process that the risks described above can be identified and managed and where additional value can be derived.

This article provides insights on how infrastructure clients can get more from EIA when it is planned carefully and carried out integrally within the project. 

Alphabet soup – EIA, ES, DCO, TWAO

Under the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2011, where new infrastructure falls within the criteria of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) development, an EIA is required and must be formally reported through an Environmental Statement (ES).

The EIA process assesses the likely environmental effects of a proposed development, in order that decision makers may take these effects into account in making their determination.

There are various other legislative mechanisms to grant consent for new infrastructure projects including Hybrid Bill, Development Consent Order (DCO) and the Transport and Works Act Orders (TWAO).

Crossrail and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1) were consented using Hybrid Bills, while HS2 is currently awaiting ascent using the same approach.

The recently approved Thames Tideway Tunnel was consented through a DCO.  

Streamlining the Planning Process

Government’s desire to remove red tape and simplify the planning process has led to a number of changes in legislation and policy guidance. To assist with planning approval for major infrastructure projects of national significance, termed Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP), the Development Consent Order (DCO) was introduced in 2008.

The main aim of the DCO was to streamline the planning process for major projects by combining all required permissions into a single consent and bringing forward the consultation process to the pre-application stage, seeking broad stakeholder consensus on the proposal prior to submission of the consent application. 

"Heathrow T5: Aside from the financial costs (over £80M), the process took eight years from the time of first application in 1993, to government approval in 2001."

A well-known example of why the planning system for major infrastructure projects had to change is the Heathrow Terminal 5 Planning Inquiry. Aside from the financial costs (over £80M according to a paper produced for the House of Commons in January 2014), the process took eight years from the time of first application in 1993, to government approval in 2001.

The public inquiry alone took four years and was the longest in UK history. The introduction of the DCO process has since achieved significant time savings, where the time from accepting an application to making a decision should now take approximately 15 months including examination in public (this excludes applications which are judicially reviewed).

As with Heathrow Terminal 5, issues raised at public inquiry or in judicial review stage are commonly associated with the project’s social and environmental effects and/or stakeholder opposition.

EIA: Adding Value

When undertaken properly, and integrated with the wider project team, EIA is a powerful tool that can deliver significant benefits which can allow a project to bridge the gap between engineering feasibility and environmental, social and stakeholder acceptability.

Tangible value can be derived from identifying key environmental issues at the pre-application stage of the project, including the ability to inform the design and site selection process and to incorporate stakeholder input into the scheme development. Assessing the likely environmental effects can help in the development of a more robust design which can stand up to challenge at a later stage of the approval process.  

Retrospectively amending project designs to accommodate environmental mitigation or stakeholder requirements can be a costly and programme damaging exercise. Therefore integration of the EIA team with the design team and maintaining strong partnerships between environment and design, are crucial elements in delivery of major infrastructure projects.

"Close collaboration between environmental and design teams supports an efficient environmental assessment process, enhanced by  a clear understanding of the scheme design and ‘real time’ opportunities to influence development."

However, it is also important to maintain an element of independence between the two teams in order to facilitate constructive challenge and innovative design solutions.  Infrastructure projects are not well served by anything less than a totally robust consideration of the significant environmental and community impacts and any weaknesses in that work are likely to lead to serious delays or a complete refusal to gain consent. 

For the relationship between environment and design to be effective, an environmental presence is best embedded within the project team to champion sustainability.  This approach has been proven to ensure that the environmental impacts and cost effective measures to mitigate them remain an integral consideration throughout optioneering and design evolution.

A close collaboration between environmental and design teams also supports an efficient environmental assessment process, which is enhanced by having a clear understanding of the scheme design and ‘real time’ opportunities to influence its development.  The formalisation of lines of communication between environment and design teams allows the client to have visibility of this key interface and well-documented decision-making.

In creating a formal record of the interaction, the project team can also produce proof of evidence of the environmental input into the scheme design which can be vital in supporting consent applications when questioned by stakeholders at a later stage.

Challenge to consent post-submission of the application does not only pose a significant risk to achieving consent, but the remedial action to resolve an issue or to defend a position can be expensive. The EIA process should promote internal challenge, so the robustness of decisions, options and designs can be tested in advance of consent submission when the stakes are so much higher.

As part of the EIA process, and a statutory requirement of the DCO process, effective consultation ensures key stakeholders are engaged at an early stage of the project. This is a building block for achieving social acceptability, producing a robust environmental assessment and should strengthen the overall project design to meet the needs of the community.

"Early contractor involvement and interface with the environment team can also lead to project success by optimising the overall design process."

Constructive and timely stakeholder dialogue is key, as insufficient consultation can lead to further costs and delays to the project, particularly through conflicts of interests with key stakeholders. In overlooking consultation there is a risk that locally specific information or local mitigation opportunities might be missed which could significantly impact the project design.  

Redesign and increased construction scope due to poorly appreciated construction constraints can pose increased cost and programme delays. Solutions to constructability issues may be constrained by the content of the granted consent which further exacerbates cost and programme issues. Contractor engagement in planning and design at an early stage of the project can resolve this.

Early contractor involvement and interface with the environment team can also lead to project success by optimising the overall design process, reducing impacts during construction and improving the efficiency of a project. It also enables a clearer understanding of the construction process to be considered as part of the EIA, allowing a more accurate assessment to be undertaken and giving greater confidence to decision makers.

There are many examples of the way that good EIA can avoid unnecessary cost and add value, such as:

• Early identification of environmental constraints to allow avoidance of impact instead of later costly mitigation of impact (e.g. the recent case of the Oxford University student accommodation buildings that were consented and built without undertaking an EIA. A voluntary retrospective EIA identified significant impacts that could cost up to £30M to resolve);
• Avoidance of expensive off-site spoil disposal through the identification of mechanisms to retain and productively reuse material for environmental mitigation (in the case of large spoil generating projects such as Crossrail, Thames Tideway Tunnel and HS2 this can be in the hundreds of millions of pounds);
• Using the interim findings from the EIA to identify and support value engineering proposals (e.g. flood modelling to justify reduced bridge spans of river crossings).

Improving EIA and ESs

One of the misconceptions with EIA is that it is an expensive process that can be an obstacle to development - as demonstrated above, EIA can deliver benefits that far exceed the initial outlay in procuring the service. 

However, an area where improvement needs to be made is in the quality of ESs. Scheme promoters should not consider value for money by the number of words and pages contained within multiple volumes of an ES. An ES, while a record of the EIA process, is primarily a tool for communication with a variety of stakeholders of varying levels of interest, knowledge and comprehension.

"It is often the case that the desire to include as much information as physically possible in the Environmental Statement, so as to avoid the report being considered in some way deficient, is frequently seen as a priority by clients."

A large and impenetrable ES, whilst possibly comprehensive, may fail to succinctly convey the key relevant points and through its size alone may deter potential readers. Budgetary resource constraints and in some instances unfamiliarity with EIAs has led planning officers to become increasingly reliant on the Non-Technical Summary (NTS) of the EIA.

However in doing so, they may miss vital information contained within the main ES, or there is a danger that the NTS does not adequately reflect the findings reported in the main ES. Indeed, some scheme promoters and even some environmental consultants see the NTS almost as a publicity brochure for the scheme rather than a summary of an objective assessment process.

As a key facet of EIA is inclusivity.  The fact that the main document may turn away the majority of its potential readership, including those using it as a decision making tool, should be a key area of interest for infrastructure clients.

However, it is often the case that the desire to include as much information as physically possible in the ES, so as to avoid the report being considered in some way deficient, is frequently seen as a priority by clients and is commonly requested by their legal advisors.

This was recently identified by Josh Fothergill, head of professional standards at the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA), who said “There is a risk local authorities are just reading the non-technical summaries because of the size of the [environmental] statements. Proportional EIA is essential, but developers are reluctant to take the risk of missing something.” (Environmental Analyst, Issue 286, Market Insight: EIA sector reaches all time high.)

"There is  a case to make to move away from traditional report to something more interactive, visual and bespoke for the intended audiences. We are starting to see such developments and there is likely to be more innovation in this area."

Moves to combat the growing size of ES documents tend to focus on more rigorous scoping of EIAs to reduce the number of topics that need detailed investigation if they are not considered likely to give rise to significant effects.  This is constrained by the willingness of planning authorities and statutory stakeholders to accept a more streamlined and focused assessment. 

Scheme approvers and statutory consultees can be relatively risk adverse, which can make it difficult to successfully scope topics out of the ES without substantial supporting evidence. However, formally scoping out a topic can reduce the risk of challenge at a later stage and so the added cost may be a greater benefit in the long run. 

A potential way to circumvent the reluctance of approvers to scope out topics can be to engage directly with the relevant statutory stakeholders prior to submission of the scoping request. The face to face approach, rather than only written communication, provides the stakeholder with the opportunity to meet individuals working on a project and gauge the respective level of competence of those undertaking the assessment work.

It can also allow for discussion of the project and for the stakeholder to raise any issues or concerns they may have. Scoping out topics will reduce the cost of assessment and ensure final ESs are proportional to likely impacts and more approachable to read for non-technical individuals such as members of the public.

There is also a case to make for the ES to move away from traditional report formats to something more interactive, visual and bespoke for the intended audiences. We are starting to see such developments and there is likely to be more innovation in this area in the near future.

Changes to EIA Regulations on the horizon

There has been a major stock take of Europe’s EIA regime over the past few years. Revisions to the EIA Directive 2011/92/EU were approved by the European Parliament in March 2014.  The revisions will lead to changes in the way EIAs are carried out, such as: expansion of EIA topics with respect to impacts on human health, biodiversity, land, contribution and vulnerability to climate change, and use of natural resources during construction and operation; and, clearer requirements for post-construction environmental monitoring, which could have significant cost and resource implications for scheme promoters and its contractors. 

It is also now specified that Environmental Statements must be prepared by ‘competent experts’, strengthening the case for involving independent environmental teams. 

These EIA revisions will not come into force in the UK until 2017 and schemes that are scoped beforehand can continue under the current Regulations for the duration of the project.  However early adoption is worth serious consideration to provide the most robust EIAs possible in the interim and to reduce the risk of challenge on the basis of future legislation requirements.

This is particularly relevant for NSIPs as larger projects work to longer timescales due to pre-application and consent submission.

Robert Slatcher is a principal consultant at Temple Group