The challenges (and solutions) for successful flood resilience projects

Charlie Overs is an Associate Director at Dalcour Maclaren and heads up our Flood Resilience team. With a combined experience of more than 100 years’ working in the sector our team provides land assembly, engagement and project management advice within the utilities and infrastructure sector.

Flood resilience is becoming ever more necessary for many local authorities and other bodies responsible for flood management across the UK and Republic of Ireland. These projects are often complex, costly and can take time. Yet, when a local authority has the right partner on board, there are time and money-saving approaches that they can use.

All flood resilience schemes face similar challenges. In this article, we are going to outline these challenges and how the right approach can get the right scheme in place, at speed.

The Government is investing £2.4 billion over the next two years to support local authorities in their efforts to promote more flood resilience schemes. This reflects the urgency of the issue as communities are experiencing more flooding, more often. So, getting the approach right is crucial for the communities that benefit from resilience projects.

Flood resilience projects have potential to overrun by years if you do not take the right actions at the beginning of the project. This can have a negative impact on the timescales and the land interests impacted by the scheme and who need to plan around the scheme. The longer a scheme takes to deliver, the less empathy and support you will receive from those affected.

Why you should appoint your land & planning consultancy earlier than you think

The success of a flood resilience project is decided in the initial stages. At the start of the scheme, you need the right expertise and partners devising the strategy around the known elements: design, planning, construction and land. Setting out the benefits of your flood resilience scheme will deliver clear expectations around timings for access to property and final delivery dates this will help mitigate many of the challenges listed below.

While there will always be known timescales, choosing the right land surveyors, planners and land referencers can take the headache out of land assembly and environmental planning. Using one single consultancy to deliver across these specialisms will contribute to a successful scheme from start to finish.

Common challenges for flood resilience projects

There are five common challenges that most flood resilience projects will face. These are:

Funding
Environmental planning
Design
Land assembly
Engaging the stakeholders.

Within each area you will also find more project-specific issues, but for this article we are only focusing on the broader challenges.

1. Accessing the right level of funding for the flood protection scheme

Getting funding is the first barrier to seeing a flood resilience project come to fruition. Local authorities have to navigate priorities within their internal budget as well as accessing funds from the Environment Agency (EA), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and any private commercial funding.

There are inevitably funding pressure points along the lifespan of the project as well. Unexpected costs can force the scheme to go over budget and while there are some events which you cannot control, there are other areas where getting the right team involved can reduce risk and even avoid unnecessary expenses.

Assembling your key stakeholders around the table as soon as possible is essential to ensuring the project will run as efficiently as possible. Including your project manager, land assembly experts, surveyors, geomatics team, the engineers designing the project, and representatives from the construction partners who will deliver the build will facilitate the delivery of a comprehensive strategy that covers all aspects of the project.

How hiring the right land assembly experts help funding

One of our senior team members coined the phase, No land equals no project! Land assembly is essential and in the context of flood resilience is about making sure you acquire the land, interests and access you need for the project and getting an appropriate compensation settlement for the land interests. To achieve this you need to involve all stakeholders in the project at the right time. Our surveyors understand land ownership, occupation, and the questions likely to be raised by land interests and will be able to advise around those stakeholders you need to involve.

By maintaining a working relationship with land interests throughout the project, we can work with them should anything change that impacts their business. This is usually when the right advise can avoid excessive negotiation around compensation.

For example, the initial design may need a certain amount of land take. This is agreed with the landowner, alongside the right level of compensation. However, when the construction team access the site, they find that they need additional space.

For the construction team, what may simply seem like an inconsequential area of a large field or a concrete yard but could well be essential to the effected parties business operation resulting in the need for processes or activities to be adapted to facilitate the loss of that space. While this can sometimes be an unexpected pressure on the budget, the impact can be managed when you have a good working relationship with the owner or can identify the impact well in advance.

Having expert surveyors with experience of negotiation in this specialist field can take the pressure and worry from your team. We aim to mitigate many of the compensation challenges around acquiring the land to support funding and budgets.

2. Environmental planning

Determining if you need an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is essential for larger flood resilience schemes. Securing an expert team of environmental planners who have experience in flood resilience schemes and the necessary assessments required to help demonstrate non-EIA development status where possible, can save a significant amount of time and money.

Early engagement with your environment and planning team is key to ensuring any environment and planning constraints are identified at the outset. The environmental planners can work with the project team to potentially avoid such constraints removing risk to programme. An appropriate EIA and planning strategy can then be identified, necessary assessments scheduled into programme, ensuring ecological survey windows aren’t missed.

For example, a scheme we are working on has had several environmental challenges to navigate, some of which have threatened the delivery programme and budget.

This is a common challenge for any project but particularly schemes in rural areas and having the right people onsite who know the process, are driven by the project programme and can adapt to changing situations will relieve many of the worries for the project team. In our particular example, the construction team were able to get on-site and work around the environmental challenges because of relationships DM’s surveyors had built up on site.

Similarly, accessing land at the right time can help mitigate some events. Knowing how the environment will change and when the best opportunities are to start work are key to reducing any challenges to construction. Works can be adapted to align with business operations such as machinery down times or workshop refits. If there is too long between the initial survey and construction starting, it could result in additional surveys which can increase overheads and delay construction. Having the right advisors on board can help mitigate this potential risk to your programme.

3. Design

Having experts in land referencing, geomatics and land surveying on the team for the duration of the scheme can help your project managers react quickly to and manage redesigns. Easy collaboration between surveyors and mapping experts can allow plans to be swiftly drafted and issued to land interests to facilitate quick and meaningful engagement

A good example of this is flood modelling, which is frequently used to demonstrate that the scheme will deliver primary objectives. Flood modelling looks at how successful the scheme will be and the positive outcomes for the community. It predicts the extent of potential future floods and the impacts with and without the proposed defences.

Whether that’s protecting a certain number of homes from being flooded, keeping infrastructure open or protecting businesses. When reviewing the design, local authorities need to assess if it:

offers the right level of defence
has the appropriate maintenance plans in place
has the necessary elements to pass planning approvals
is a cost-effective solution.

When the flood resilience project is in place, some designs will result in the flooding of open space, golf courses, sports fields and agricultural land. The latter will impact on crops, soil structure and soil fertility which will have a future impact on the land and a farmer’s business. Flood modelling helps explain the impacts to land interests and with the assessment of compensation.

Having the right design is essential so that the protection levels afforded by a scheme can justify the impact to the land and businesses effected. DM’s geomatics team is experienced in presenting and interpreting flood modelling maps for land interests to help with justifying that impact and demonstrating fair compensation.

4. Having a robust land assembly strategy in place and a team to deliver it

We would always encourage clients’ not to use surveyors less experienced or who don’t specialise in flood resilience schemes. You might think, ‘you would say that’ but there is a danger the wrong supplier may add unnecessary pressure to the project, resulting in delays to timescales, and risks to budget.

Appointing a land consultancy experienced in delivering flood resilience schemes is key. Look for a company that has experience in devising and delivering a land assembly strategy. Having a team in place who knows the processes to identify ownership of the land, land usage, and the negotiation skills to secure the land in line with or under the shadow of statutory powers will take the pressure off your wider project team. This will also enable your project manager to focus on other areas.

Likewise, getting the right support with environmental planning and the right tools from a focussed geomatics team can help manage significant challenges within the scheme.

5. Engaging landowners and the public

Finally, the landowners and members of the public are critical to the success of any flood resilience scheme. Engaging with the landowners in the right way, at the right time will reduce many challenges for the project. At the start of the project, when you know what land you need and are building the land strategy, is the best time to engage the land interests effected because you can incorporate landowner feedback and requirements into the strategy.

Likewise, being open and honest with members of the public as to why their route to work will be disrupted, for example, can help develop trust and reduce pressures later in the programme. Ongoing engagement with the public concerning dates and times for planned disruption, changes to the programme and impact on local amenities is essential. Ideally, this should be before any large equipment is brought on-site.

You will always have members of the public who do not understand why you are approaching the flood risk issue in a particular way but by explaining how the benefits outweigh the costs, many people will be onside with the plans. This will reduce any complaints that other departments may need to handle. Your communications team may need informing of your planned works to share public engagement messages.

How to ensure a positive relationship with the landowners for better land assembly

Land assembly is one area where you can have confidence and control. We describe our services as being “first on and last off site”. We offer a unique service based upon experience which will pay dividends to everyone involved.

Whilst scheme promoters often have the right, under the Water Resouces or Land Drainage Acts 1991 to access land with as little as seven days’ notice, in reality, relying on a notice is not reasonable or feasible. Instead, engaging the land interests at the start of the project and building trusting and respectful relationships will often avoid future complications. We always recommend negotiations with land interests run in parallel with all the other challenges we addressed earlier. Sometimes, scheme promoters involve land interests too late, for example immediately before access to land is required. This can inhibit the development of relationships and therefore has the potential to cause issues and impact delivery timescale.

By getting the right people to establish and build relationships at the right time, project teams can make the right recommendations and therefore remove some of the risks that could de rail your project. We provide a one-stop shop for flood resilience projects providing:

Land referencing to efficiently and diligently identify and record land interests affected by the scheme.
Land interest engagement, including our dedicated Liaison Service.
Understanding the needs and concerns of land interests to support in the delivery of land acquisition
The application of appropriate legislation to secure access under statutory powers when required
A comprehensive geomatics service to present flood modelling data in a useful and practical manner and to provide supporting plans to legal agreements
Engaging our environmental planning team for EIA & planning advice and services, including the management of environmental surveys
Engagement with 3^rd party land agents representing land interests
Experience in communicating updates and information needed at each development stage of the project
Compensation negotiation
Being the first on and last off the project.

Why your land team should be the last off-site

Being the first on and last off a project we offer a consistency for land interests, who may fear a long and uncertain period of disruption. We understand flood resilience projects so we can act as intermediaries between the design team, contractors on site and the land interests. Put another way we translate between Hi Viz and Shirt collar. Having our team in place to liaise between each party can help keep the project moving forwards, develop trust and keep all parties engaged with scheme requirements.

In all our projects, we commit to being the ‘last to leave’. As a result, we work with the land interests all the way through to the point where the final compensation claim is submitted, negotiated and settled. We believe it is essential that the land interest has the confidence of consistency and the scheme promoter has peace of mind that their interests are represented from start to finish.

A successful flood resilience scheme is about communication

Ultimately, the success of a flood resilience scheme is dependent upon getting the right people on side, at the right time and in manner that builds and maintains relationships. That includes the land interests, the local community , local businesses and anyone else who may be impacted.

Successfully engaging with all stakeholders will reduce many of the obstacles and challenges in delivering a flood resilience scheme at speed.

If you would like to find out more about DM’s recent projects and enquire how we could ensure your project is delivered successfully and at pace, please email me at [email protected]