A year in the life of Lisa
Lisa Sawyer is our Director of Civil Engineering and Sustainable Drainage Systems and she joined the Land Studio team a year ago. Here she talks about her first year.
Q: How has your first year at Land Studio gone and what is it like as a civil engineer to work as part of a team of landscape architects?
It has been a really exciting year. I’m enjoying working as part of a smaller team, embedded in a practice of landscape architects and being very hands-on with clients throughout the design process. My role is very varied, and we can offer something different to other engineering or landscape practices. Through good co-ordination between the sustainable drainage and the landscape design, clients are seeing the value in getting our combined advice early on in a project.
Q: What are you excited about going forward?
We’re doing some great things at Land Studio and it’s a very forward-thinking practice. We’re building up our engineering team and we’re looking for an ecologist to come in-house this year. The Building with Nature accreditation (we’ve got our own assessor, Rachael Fenton) defines what good green and blue infrastructure looks like, and is at the heart of what we do. I think the Building With Nature standards should drive all design going forward.
Q: What are the key topics of conversation you’re having with clients at the moment?
There are some big changes coming over the next 12 months, including the Government’s biodiversity net gain (BNG) strategy in November which will make sure the habitat for wildlife is in a better state than it was before development.
Since January 2019, all construction work in Wales with over 100m2 of new hardstanding is required to have Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) to manage on-site surface water and they have to be approved by a SuDS approving body (SAB).
We’re expecting the same rules to come into effect in England within the next 12 months and therefore will continue to speak to our English clients about the work we have undertaken within Wales and our experience of the SAB process.
Phosphates are still an issue in a number of rivers and we are helping clients to design and install more efficient sewage treatment plants to remove harmful substances being discharged into local watercourses and installing raingardens and wetlands to help treat surface water.
We’re also using techniques to reduce surface water into the public sewer systems to help prevent flooding and help reduce CSO overflows being used. Incorporating SuDS within schemes such as raingardens will also enhance biodiversity and amenity value to help bring nature closer to people’s lives.
Q: Tell us about some of your most interesting projects to date
There have been quite a few! I’ve been working with a Welsh architect YOMA on a replacement dwelling on the North Wales coast which required a SuDS scheme and SAB approval. It is an interesting project in an area of outstanding natural beauty, and we packed the scheme with lots of green SuDS. The SuDS Approving Body approved it in just a few weeks, which is pretty unheard of. I’m also working with an arboriculturist on a scheme in Anglesey which requires SAB approval, this time a community tree nursery.
Q: Tell us about an interesting place you have visited professionally and what’s coming up
I’ve recently been to New York on holiday with my family and, like everyone at Land Studio, we’ve always got an interest in our environments 24/7. I took lots of photos. Water was one of the main features in Central Park. I also liked a green roof adjacent to the High Line which is a great new public park on an old railway line, Little Island, a new public space in the Hudson and even a rain garden in Battery Park.
I’m looking forward to giving a talk this week in Cardiff along with my colleague Simon Richards. We’ll be part of the Design Commission for Wales discussion on ‘The role of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems in creating better places’. The event will highlight good practice in the design of SuDS, a topic very close to my heart.