Eye on Environment
Alan McVicker
Alan McVicker is one of that rare breed. He’s a senior private sector executive who has made the jump to the public sector.
And, in McVickers case, he’s in a public sector role which comes with quite a challenge.
A challenge which impacts on all 1.7 million of us in Northern Ireland.
The Director of the Programme Delivery Support Unit (PDSU) is one of the central players as Northern Ireland strives to build a waste infrastructure that will meet some ultra-tough EU directives over the coming years.
“We have a vital role”, he says with commendable understatement. “The 26 local authorities here in Northern Ireland have responsibility for waste disposal and management and they now face some serious pressure from the EU to markedly change they way they do this”.
“That’s where the PDSU comes in. We’re here to help them do just that, but, given the very tight timescales, it’s going to be quite a task”.
The tough targets (more of which later) loom large. But some steps have already been taken.
NI’s local authorities have formed themselves into three strategic groups – arc21 covering Belfast and the eastern seaboard, the North West Region Waste Management Group and the Southern Waste Management Partnership.
All three are acutely aware of the scale of the project, and when it comes to central government, they have the support of the Belfast-based PDSU which, in turn, receives its funding from the Department of the Environment and Strategic Investment Board.
The PDSU Team
“Our role is to provide whatever specific expertise and advice they might need and to support them along the way”, says Alan McVicker. “We’re all working towards the same objectives and this has been a significant factor in the development of the strong ‘can-do’ attitude and sense of team-work that is evident across all the groups”.
He comes to the role from a lengthy spell with private sector Shanks Waste Management, most of which was spent in Scotland, where McVicker graduated from Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt University before commencing his career in the industry.
In a nutshell, the challenging European Union Directives governing the management of household waste set out to eliminate the use of landfill as far as possible as a means of disposal. That, of course, means much more recycling and the use of newer disposal technologies will be required to meet the targets.
There are key target deadlines in 2010, 2013 and then again in 2020.
“Miss any one of those and our local authority groups here in Northern Ireland could face some very severe financial penalties as a result”, says McVicker.
“These are very serious European targets with very serious penalties for those who fail to meet them”.
The Programme Delivery Support Unit sets out to help the local groups in a number of different ways including the following key areas:-
- Co-ordinating procurement activities
- Assisting with planning applications and securing sites
- Co-ordinating a communications strategy
- Assisting with business cases and funding
- Assisting with external advisors
Aside from Alan McVicker, the Unit already has planning, communications and procurement specialists on board. In the near future, it will appoint additional advisors as well as administrative personnel.
“We also have access to legal, financial and insurance specialists as well as a number of other experts”, adds Alan McVicker.
He reckons that a lot of progress has already been made on improving waste management in Northern Ireland.
Many householders already have three-bin collection systems to encourage recycling, and further measures are being rolled out all the time.
“But our message is that a lot of work remains to be done to meet the EU directives. Householders, and businesses, will see more changes occurring to the way they have to dispose of their waste”.
Both business and consumers, he says, can do their bit by careful waste management.
Alan McVicker urges us all to think about cutting down on unnecessary packaging, and to keep recycling to front of mind.
“Think about it this way”, he says. “By the 2013 target year, Northern Ireland has to have cut down on its use of landfill for the disposal of bio-degradable municipal waste (BMW) by 50% That’s a lot of waste, and it means that we all have a lot of work to do”.
That 2013 date is concentrating the specialist waste management minds on what is known as residual household waste. For the layman (and that’s most of us….), that’s the waste which doesn’t go into the blue or brown recycling containers.
“There are lots of alternative solutions available, but we have to look at those which are best for Northern Ireland, we have to look at the costs involved, at the timescales and at a lot more than that. It’s a hugely complex area”.
One thing is for sure. The close partnership between this new unit and Northern Ireland’s local authorities is rightly being held up as a prime example of joined up government in action.
“And it is this collaborative approach that is producing real results and will help us succeed”, adds Alan McVicker.