A large block of Pollution Engineering readers consider themselves to be environmental consultants. A consultant is someone who provides expert or professional advice, for our purposes, to companies with environmental issues. They are commonly called upon to solve unique and challenging environmental issues, and are the top specifiers of environmental technology.

So who are these people and what to they think about the environmental market? A survey was recently conducted by the research department at BNP Media in Troy, Mich., PE's parent company. It was e-mailed to 14,996 readers to nail down a few industry demographics, and get their views on the status and future of this all-important job category.

Who are they?

Most environmental consultants surveyed said they are hired within the industrial markets, with 75 percent calling that their main source of revenue. However, municipal and government projects are also strong as many readers reported that 40 percent of their projects support these markets.

Environmental projects will generate significant revenue as our readers report that nearly a third of them will be responsible for individual projects costing over one million dollars. The encouraging aspect of this is that the numbers are about the same as the last study that was accomplished in 2005. That means that business has remained up with few projects being cancelled or postponed.

A big responsibility

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The environmental business has always been in flux, as technology constantly advances to keep up with increased demands from the public and government authorities. To illustrate just how drastically this can shift paradigms over a relatively short time period, recall that in the 1980s most contaminants or spill cleanups were measured in parts per thousand, which we referred to by the acronym "ppt." Today, ppt stands for parts per trillion, a level of measurement thought impossible two decades ago but is becoming commonplace today.

The constant change has created a consistent need for upgrades, refinements, better practices, etc. This adds up to a lot of money changing hands. Among those consultants surveyed, almost 1/3 (31 percent) said they will be responsible for $1 million or more in annual environmental spending in the next year. Two-thirds predicted annual expenses of over $100,000 in the coming year.

One of the results that really jumped out was the level of experience accomplished by our readers. It makes sense; environmental disasters are not publically tolerated, and pressure from local residents and the press would soon end the career of a consultant who provided poor advice. If aptitude scales with experience, then our readers have proved themselves to be reliable sources of advice: 55 percent of them have 25 or more years of experience, and 80 percent reported they have over 15 years under their belts. Table 1 provides a breakdown of the experience level of those surveyed.

What's on the horizon?

A logical question that any businessperson needs an answer to is, "What can we expect for the future?" This information is critical to any business as plans and budgets need to be built. Failure to properly plan ahead can result in disaster.

Since we have established that our readers have a good amount of experience, we asked them what types of projects are they working on now and what types of projects to they expect will be the result of future congressional actions.

As shown in , question 12 asked what issues they were currently working on. Water projects were at the top of the list but air, waste and remediation were not far behind. All aspects of environmental control projects are generating business.

When we asked the same group what their future expectations were, the story changed a bit. Air issues clearly led among regulatory changes that consultants see coming down the pipeline. "Greenhouse gases," "Air pollution/quality," and "Carbon footprint" were top issues that consultants think will be most important this year. It is hard to disagree with their conclusions: the EPA has declared greenhouse gases to be a danger to public health and welfare, and congressional members have been seeking support for new energy legislation, as well as additional controls for mercury, particulates and other hazardous air pollutants.

Keep in mind, though, that we also can expect new water rules for endocrine disruptors, coal ash and other hot topics. Reports are still being released that fish and frogs are mysteriously changing. Bee populations continue to dwindle and the reasons are not yet clear. These are types of issues that drive politicians.

While greenhouse gases and air quality were at the top of the list, responses were quite varied. While most of them were related to environmental topics, there were quite a few responses covering other subjects. For example, the economy, health care and the inability of Congress to take action was listed by respondents. Energy issues from nuclear to bio to green alternative energy sources were mentioned.

There was also a strong representation from those that thought regulations should be abolished with comments such as, "how to save industry from environmental regulations" or "less government." Considering how much of a driver new controls represent for the environmental industry, such sentiment perhaps demonstrates how difficult some of these challenges are to meet.

Keeping up

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Regulations are the hottest topic that consultants mentioned that they needed more information about, and keeping up with constant change means keeping up with the latest news. Regulations are written and rewritten. Analytical capabilities are lowered as precision improves. New technologies are developed and marketed. Following all of these changes and practices is a full-time job!

There are plenty of tools available to help disseminate the information, and the environmental consultants in our survey used a lot of them. So how do professional environmental consultants keep up with information on new technology and news? According to the survey, more start with trade magazines than any other resource. As those who have worked in research and development can attest, what works in the laboratory and can be proven mathematically does not always work just the same in the field. Trade magazines discuss the practical application of technologies and best practices with real world examples. The information contained within trade magazines is still cutting edge, but they are usually formatted in such a way as to provide expert information while remaining accessible for non-experts. Because of this, a consultant can bring an article to the non-technical client to demonstrate the effectiveness of a certain solution.

The Internet is often considered an important resource, and search engines are considered the gateway to the Internet, so it was no surprise that search engines (18 percent) came in second on our list of primary sources for environmental consultants to get their information. Why not first? The problem is that information is often overwhelming when searching the Web. Often, there is just not enough time to do proper research by navigating along the digital highway. The ease with which Web pages can be published (and changed) also tends to negatively impact credibility. Such trust, which trade magazines have established over decades of publishing, can certainly be achieved on the Internet too, but it takes time to develop, and is difficult to assess with a simple Google inquiry.

To see just how much strength the printed word still carries in this industry, association newsletters/journals (14 percent), trade journals (7 percent), and digital editions of trade magazines (7 percent) rounded out the top five information resources identified as "primary." Among resources that consultants use in general, the top five were association newsletters and journals, trade magazines, colleagues, trade journals and conferences/trade shows. Search engines came in sixth.

Also undermining the usefulness of search engines is the sheer enormity of its information database. Consider the case of a reader that was interested in finding the latest technology to control "endocrine disruptors." This happens to be a relatively new topic. By typing just those words into Google, 345,000 pages were found. Since the object of this problem was to learn about controlling these contaminants, the word "control" was added to the search term. That narrowed it to 140,000 pages. That is a lot of reading.

For those that need to get deeper into the nuts and bolts of how new technology works, there are trade journals (not to be confused with trade magazines) that delve deeply into the mysterious workings of such knowledge. Peer-reviewed, verbose, and heavy on text, they provide long drawn-out discussions with multiple tables of data. Everything is black and white, as there are seldom any photographs. The wording is very technical and if something is introduced that seemed useful, there is very little chance that the document could be shared as is with the plant manager or the comptroller. However, for those who need to understand the inner workings of the technologies they are implementing, trade journals can provide valuable insight for scientists.

Taking the next step

Once they learned about a technology, the next logical step was to learn about the equipment or products that would be needed. Search engines and trade magazines were at the top of the list of the resources used to keep up with such trends, but this time search engines won out. The rest of the choices seemed to clump together below that. When allowed to select all of the sources they use, however, the largest was trade magazines (68 percent), with search engines (64 percent) and colleagues (62 percent) close behind.

From this and past surveys, we have learned that readers will note equipment or services in a magazine and then make a tear page file. Then, when they have time, they use the information gathered from reading to visit a website and learn more.

The bottom line

The environmental business continues to be strong, and the outlook for the future is that it will remain strong. New legislation is expected that will boost the need for new environmental technologies and services for the foreseeable future. While large companies have their captive staff of environmental personnel, consultants expect to play a large role in new projects that come up, adjusting for increased productivity or correcting problems that are found from past actions. New technology and lower permit requirements translate into additional spending for equipment and consulting engineering knowhow. As the industry marches toward its future and new regulations emerge from relative slumber, gathering technical information and staying up to date on available products will likely be more important that ever. Depend upon trade magazines to still be there helping as always. PE