At Moffatt & Nichol, we prioritise client needs and expectations, which drives us to continually invest in our expertise and services. As part of this ongoing effort, we have significantly grown our UK coastal presence to strengthen our coastal offerings and capabilities in the UK, Europe, and beyond. The new office welcomes a team of coastal engineers and strategic advisors to support clients in assessing the feasibility of planning, securing funding for, and delivering flood and coastal protection measures and asset management. Hamish Hall leads the coastal-focused Exeter office and its growing team of renowned experts, who are tackling a diverse array of projects.
“We provide due diligence services with regard to risk, with an in-house modelling team who are adept at modelling and describing risk anywhere in the world,” says Hamish. “This could involve adapting an existing coastal defence to a changing climate, repairing deteriorating assets, undertaking and interpreting investigations into the condition of assets, or helping achieve the necessary permits and consent to carry out site works.”
The team is currently helping a local authority in the UK manage flood risk for a small and frequently flooded town by better controlling flows from an upstream mill leat (an artificial water trench, typically serving a mill). On the coast, redesign is underway for a failing coastal protection system that will include a more appropriate breakwater and ensure robust testing of future beach orientation for everyday and extreme wave climates. The Exeter coastal team has also been retained as advisors on beach management for two important nuclear power stations, interpreting monitoring data, and helping determine beach management requirements now and well into the future.
The Exeter team has also been working with Moffatt & Nichol’s established coastal group. Since joining the firm, Hamish has been impressed with Moffatt & Nichol’s collaborative culture, recently having had one of the U.S. coastal engineers working “across the pond” with Moffatt & Nichol’s UK team, sharing concepts, modelling tools, and new ways of establishing vegetation in intertidal locations. Looking ahead, Hamish takes a forward-thinking approach in confronting the challenges associated with climate change and sea level rise.
“Managing flooding due to sea level rise is just one of the obstacles we face, from an ageing population through a scarcity of resources. Engineers and scientists need to be at the vanguard of better design, looking for adaptations that help with a range of problems, not just managing flood risk,” says Hamish, “I feel that funding to manage risk will become very constrained soon, so we need to create multifunctional projects and think broadly in the planning stages. We have to think long term and tackle tricky issues now.”
For the present, project inspiration is not far from Hamish’s office, where he can look out of the window and see Exeter’s Roman wall, nearly 2,000 years old and still standing. Although much adapted, he observes that it still performs a function, and ideally, the team’s designs will do the same.
For questions or to contact our Exeter office about coastal consulting services, please contact us at publicrelations@moffattnichol.com.
