Environment Projects:

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I tried to add Environmental consultancy to our portfolio but misjudged the market a bit. By 1980 I had formed an environmental division, with all the marketing collateral in place and one part time graduate specialist, but did not land a fee-earning project until 1984.

 

One of our early ISO14001 environmental projects was in Hungary where we put an Environmental Management System into 57 ARAL petrol filling stations. Surprisingly the most significant pollutant was the soap suds from 57 car washes which gushed down into the street drains. They were OK on the hydrocarbons as they had good control of fuel storage and dispensing.

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Less successful with hydrocarbon effluent was Budapest Airport. We weren't actually on this project, but as our client had their office 'airside' I got to know a lot of the airport management team and knew of their problems. They were perplexed by being unable to reconcile their aviation fuel records. Every month they were short of many hundreds of gallons of expensive aviation fuel. This hadn’t mattered when they were purely military, but now the accountants moved in and expressed the loss not in gallons but in monetary terms. I knew the chap who was scratching his head about it but I had no time to help him. However we chatted. 'Nobody can be taking it home in their car and selling it on the black market,' he said.

'But they could be signing for deliveries that haven't arrived' said I.

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We'd been debating this on my previous trip. When I flew in next time his staff were eager to explain the loss. 

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'Good job you don't stay near the perimeter of the airport'.

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'Why?'

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'Last Thursday afternoon there was a huge explosion. The village on the north eastern boundary of the airport was burnt down'.

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It seems there had been a gradual leakage of fuel from underground storage tanks for years. It had seeped underground and found its natural level which was all fine until a contractor dug a big hole. When finished he leant against his JCB, lit a cigarette and threw the match into the hole. This ignited the rich mixture, lifting several acres of topsoil into the air and with it several allotment sheds and two small bungalows.

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