Two Urban Drainage Group Awards for RPS

RPS staff were recognised with two awards at the recent CIWEM Urban Drainage Group Conference in Blackpool, with Ally Gorst securing the overall Best Paper prize and Zara Herring being Highly Commended in the Adam Dean Award Poster Competition.

November’s event was CIWEM UDG’s 33^rd Autumn Conference, attracting over 200 delegates to the seaside town. The event spans three days and is the industry’s main conference and networking event of the year, including workshops, dinner and a research forum, all supported by an industry led exhibition. This year’s event included 18 technical papers on a range of subjects, four of which were presented by RPS staff - Margaret Williams, Ally Gorst, Matt Butterfield, and Celina Wong (last year’s Adam Dean Award winner)ⁱ

Ally Gorst’s winning paper was titled “Can we gain confidence from Model Confidence?” and investigated how the industry can develop a robust and consistent approach to understanding and quantifying the confidence our mathematical models of sewerage and drainage network can give us in developing investment strategies and solutions. The paper was extremely timely given the release of an updated Code of Practice for Hydraulic Modelling of Urban Drainage Systems which introduces the concept of understanding model confidence.

RPS Graduate Modeller Zara Herring presented her poster “Modelling for Dummies” to a panel of five judges as part of poster competition for the Adam Dean Award, which is aimed at young modellers with no previous presentation experience. The poster was based on Zara’s role on the Integrated Urban Drainage project being undertaken by RPS for Anglian Water, and was one of six posters shortlisted. Following the presentation, she was quizzed by the panel on the project and her role.

RPS Wastewater Consultancy Director Steve Hogg said “UDG is a key event for us so it was great to see so many of the team putting themselves forward and presenting really interesting and thought-provoking papers. The level of effort that went in to all of them was excellent, and winning two awards was the icing on the cake of a really successful event for RPS.”

ⁱ Celina was the 2016 Adam Dean Award winner. Her paper focused on the Newark UPM study she undertook as part of RPS Water’s Sewerage Management Planning Framework.