The new division will be run from DGD's Edinburgh office, serving as an environmental hub for the entire group.

With much of the work GDG undertakes having typically an environmental interface, the ability to service such work by a specialist in-house team that has extensive expertise in all aspects of environmental management will bring many time, cost and efficiency benefits to its client portfolio.

Gerry O' Sullivan, GDG UK director, said: "This initiative by GDG in Edinburgh is an important step to achieving GDG's goal to build a world-class consultancy that will provide the highest level of engineering and geoenvironmental specialist services."

The environmental risk management and contaminated land capability will be headed by John Cleland, who brings over 25 years' experience in environmental science to GDG and a wealth of practical project knowledge, having worked in consultancy and operational roles on a variety of sites including operational ports and mines, legacy mineral processing sites including landfills and development sites from housing to commercial and industrial developments across the globe.

Speaking about GDG's new environmental capability, John Cleland, principal environmental scientist said: "GDG has always provided elements of ad-hoc environmental support across all the sectors it works in and with the level of work growing it makes sense to now offer this service via a dedicated team of specialists that has the knowledge and experience to fully understand and provide for clients unique requirements."

Over the last 12 months, GDG has completed numerous challenging environmental projects, including early-stage environmental risk assessments for new mixed-use developments; remediation design of over 25 brownfield sites in major cities including London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin and Belfast; design of contaminated dredge stabilisation in various ports around the UK and Ireland; and soil and waste management planning and support, including construction environmental management planning on major developments.

Cleland added: "On projects such as this, it is essential GDG is able to support clients on the management of environmental risk pre- and post-development and use its expertise to focus on prevention, using the team's experience in legacy management to direct projects on major developments to incorporate measures to reduce the risk of future impacts and subsequent liabilities."

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