Mackley was on hand to assist the Environment Agency with the construction of temporary flood barriers on the Isle of Wight on 21 October, as part of preparations for Storm Brian.
The call-out was the first Environment Agency Emergency Response of 2017 and saw Mackley, working on behalf of Team Van Oord (TVO), move barriers into place in readiness for the storm – which resulted in yellow weather warnings from the Met Office in anticipation of strong winds across the UK.
With the storm force winds came the risk of high seas and as a precaution the Environment Agency took the decision to erect flood defences which fortunately, in the end, were not required.
The flooding during the winter of 2013/14 highlighted a need to increase the Environment Agency’s operational response capacity during significant flood incidents.
To meet this increased need for support, the Environment Agency’s Water and Environment Management Framework (WEM) Tier 1 suppliers, including TVO, agreed to assist EA teams in the deployment of temporary flood barriers and other equipment before, during and after a flood incident.
Under the new arrangement, which was announced in November 2016, TVO is now lead supplier to provide ‘incident response resources’ to the EA operational teams in Wessex, Solent and South Downs (Sussex, Hampshire & Isle of Wight) and West Thames (Surrey, Buckinghamshire & Berkshire).
TVO has also been given responsibility to provide secondary response in the Kent and South London, Devon and Cornwall, and Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire areas.
24 October 2017
