Third-Party Approvals

Mitigating Risk by Handling Third-Party Approvals

Our infrastructure team are particularly adept and gaining those third-party approvals which so often become project risks. Our approach is underpinned by working relationships and over many years we have developed relationships with Water Companies (such as Thames Water and Severn Trent), Network Rail, Transport for London, Environment Agency and Canals and Rivers Trust, amongst others. We understand their requirements and therefore don’t always need to engage with them to provide early advise but when we do engage with the relevant party it is a two way process and we are simply incorporating their, often over cautious or onerous, requests. Typically we would never approach them with a blank canvas, we always endeavour to table a solution which our client is comfortable with, thereby ensuring that onerous requirements are avoided.  

If onerous requirements are requested we always challenge these but not in a confrontational way. We try and understand the overarching driver for the request and endeavour to find a compromise position. In our experience this approach results in the most beneficial solution for our client. 

When dealing with existing third-party assets such as highways, railways, services, tunnels, canals and rivers one of the key challenges is to find solutions which minimise impact to the asset but without sterilising the land around them with onerous easements and “no build zones”. We adopt a range of techniques which start by understanding the asset itself and the constraints it poses. Using engineering knowledge and experience this tells us how close to the asset we can reasonably build. We then use a range of techniques including sophisticated finite element ground movement analyses to demonstrate to the asset owner our proposals will not adversely affect the asset and agree any mitigation we may employ during the construction and operational phases.