As a consultancy that established itself in the field of irrigation, Water Design Engineers has an experienced and excellent understanding of the relationship between soil, water and plants. In the context of SuDS design, this provides us with a distinct advantage over our competitors who are typically more traditional civil engineering consultancies.

Our drainage design work falls within the remit of our Environmental Engineering department, which is headed by George Rose, a civil and environmental engineer with over 20 years of experience.

Our approach to drainage design is much more in the spirit of the principles laid out in The SuDS Manual, using the landscape to store, attenuate, filter and infiltrate surface water as far as reasonably practical. We are not opposed to the use of underground tanks and cellular soakaway units, but we see them as a last resort after all of the landscape options have either been exhausted or ruled out.

We firmly believe that good SuDS design does not need to add any cost to the design process, as long as the right people are engaged at the right time. We are well experienced in working with landscape architects, architects and master planners, and we advocate being involved from the concept stage to ensure the best value for money.

We use fully supported drainage design and ground modelling software so that our models can be tested against specific rainfall events – a standard requirement of the planning process. Once the concept is approved, our detailed design provides working drawings and specifications that can be used by contractors to ensure that the design intent becomes a reality.

We work closely with ground investigation consultants to ensure that all of the risks associated with infiltration are identified and adequately mitigated as part of our design.