Our operating performance | Environment and climate solutions Market context The global environmental and climate consulting services industry has had a buoyant year, with momentum in environmental approvals, coastal and flood management, climate change and energy services. This was driven by trade expansion in ports, new technology and industry expansion associated with net zero transition policies and associated government funding schemes. Coupled with this, wildfire and severe storm events across the world highlighted a growing need to understand and mitigate the physical and social risks of climate change. These market conditions created a strong drive amongst the environmental and sustainability consulting sector’s top- tier players to expand and consolidate their position, and this has created a squeeze on the smaller specialist consultancies, both in terms of opportunity and talent retention. We have sought to form partnerships in this space, and have adjusted our recruitment and retention approaches to secure and keep our talented people. There is an increased societal expectation on businesses, industry, and government, to take responsibility for restoring and protecting the environment. We provide the expertise and assurance that they need to measure, monitor and manage environmental risks. Performance After three solid years of double-digit order intake growth, our global environment and climate solutions portfolio performance remained stable for the year 22/23. We successfully retained and expanded work with key customers across the ports sector, mining sector, and government customers. We have been able to secure larger and longer term projects; achieved through excellent communications and service delivery, maintaining our position as an independent trusted advisor within these sectors. Our naturally collaborative spirit, along with added dynamism from new hires, also propelled success across our ecological and field-based consulting services, and there was continued growth of our coastal and flood service offerings. This included further work in the climate risk space, such as innovative projects on blue carbon accounting and rehabilitation – driven by the increasing corporate focus of our customers on both climate and biodiversity risk disclosure. Local business development campaigns in APAC also created traction to deliver the region’s capabilities into the emerging offshore wind market, as well as exciting opportunities for coastal infrastructure that will support alternate fuels. The UK and Europe region delivered a stable performance against the previous year, with the continuation of long-term environmental consulting and permit support to key energy customers in the North Sea. In the defence market, we delivered continuation of management and updates to our Defence Legislation Support Tool (directly to defence regulator), and a project for the Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) looking at their acquisition process in light of net zero and sustainability criteria. Another key win was with the Future Combat Air Support (FCAS) programme, supporting the programme demonstrator to ensure environmental risk management, planning and stakeholder engagement across the entire project lifecycle. The commercial flood risk and modelling team also showed steady performance, being successful where the modelling studies included higher levels of technical complexity, such as the large win for the Isle of Man. In the US and Canada, work was secured for an environmental legislation roadmap and the creation of a sustainability action plan under the ELMS contract, providing a starting point for the new environmental consulting business in region. BMT Group Ltd | Review of performance 22-23 18
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