Engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company, Black & Veatch, is expanding its global environmental capabilities and services as businesses respond to increasingly complex demands from regulators, shareholders and consumers, it said.

The expansion comes as companies, utilities and governments navigate a range of COVID-19 related operational challenges and a recent wave of ambitious sustainability commitments. Meeting environmental demands and delivering on sustainability targets, however, requires new levels of innovation and expertise, the company says.

“Black & Veatch’s environmental team includes nearly 200 dedicated scientists, consultants and specialised compliance and permitting experts capable of providing direct service to clients of various scale,” it said. “The team’s vast experience can help stakeholders overcome complexity and reduce program costs by making it easier to integrate environmental considerations at every phase of the infrastructure lifecycle.”

Dave Johnson, co-Leader of the Environmental Services team, said: “Every industry is embracing environmental stewardship, and companies that fail to integrate the right expertise at the right time carry significant business and reputational risks. By collaborating across Black & Veatch, clients will benefit from our dedicated in-house environmental experts, who uniquely understand their environmental risk and opportunities.”

Advances in technology, consumer behaviour and economics are also transforming infrastructure development, according to the company. “The rise of distributed infrastructure programs, which bring data analytics, electricity and other new services closer to the end user, is a major trend influencing new thinking and approaches to environmental risk and compliance strategies.”

Lisa Fewins, co-Leader of the Environmental Services team, said Black & Veatch’s clients want innovative, dependable solutions to better operate in a dynamic global environmental landscape.

“With many clients seeking to more effectively address traditional operating issues, as well as emerging challenges tied to COVID-19, our ability to work across Black & Veatch’s world-class engineering, procurement and construction teams on a daily basis lets us offer faster, more integrated solutions,” she said.

Black & Veatch says it offers more than 80 existing environmental services across five prominent categories including: environmental air quality, remediation, management, compliance and science.

Fewins said: “We are taking a leading role in partnering with innovative technology providers to support our clients with cutting-edge solutions, as well as helping clients plan, scale and manage environment requirements.”

In addition to traditional environmental services across air quality, site remediation and advanced water solutions, Black & Veatch says it is an industry leader in the development of electric vehicle charging infrastructure and renewable solutions, including solar photovoltaic and wind energy.

“The company is also helping advance sustainability and environmental goals for mining companies, data centre providers and many more industries,” it said.