Downley Consultants undertakes Research and Innovation projects for governments, industry and international organisations around the world. This work is predominantly in the field of new and innovative technologies and products and their potential benefits. All of these are intended to provide information that clearly identifies some or all of:

• State-of-the-Art of a technology or group of technologies
• Customer Needs and how technologies meet, or fail to meet, them
• Capabilities, limitations, cost-effectiveness and benefits of competing or overlapping technologies
• Potential for development of innovative solutions and how this can be achieved

Government & International Development Organisations - For Governments the need is to guide and inform policy development in relation to the wider impacts of underground infrastructure construction and renovation. For example the ways in which innovative technologies such as trenchless methods or geosynthetics products can affect construction, its environmental impact and sustainability. Similarly the impact of indirect and social cost of works in streets and urban areas requires authorities to have a clear understanding of innovations, their costs, benefits and risks so that Governments can make considered policy decisions.

We have experience and expertise in investigating industry structures and investment and aid needs in developing markets and the potential for technological innovation to support the provision of safe drinking water and sanitation and of waste management facilities that do not damage the environment. For international development organisations these are critical health and development priorities.

Business – Businesses in energy, mining and other fields with significant environmental impacts benefit from understanding the potential application of new technologies for:

• Improving the performance of their operations as well as meeting increasing environmental pressure.
• Adapting trenchless methods to mineral extraction to improve recovery rates in difficult underground deposits.
• Trenchless installation of interceptor wells and drains to improve onshore oilfield recovery and reduce waste and contamination from spillage.
• Interception of contamination sources such as landfills in order to protect groundwater and other sensitive receptors.
• Use of innovative geosynthetic materials to improve product recov-ery in heap leaching.

Research Houses & Industry Organisations – We have extensive experience of undertaking independent, expert reviews of technology for research houses and industry organisations in water, wastewater, geosynthetics and trenchless technology. Our knowledge and practical experience from our direct engineering activities enable us to provide Clients with a clear view of the current state-of-the-art in a field, the capabilities and limitations of techniques, the benefits to users and customers, their cost-effectiveness, and the direction of future developments.

These reviews include independent, expert appraisal of products, technologies and specific vendors’ offerings that support our Clients and their member companies in understanding the proliferation of new techniques and products. Thus they can make decisions from positions of real knowledge and can define and meet challenging performance targets by deploying the most effective new technologies to meet their objectives.