Vysus Group’s Planit22 campaign details how we can show our commitment in playing our part to facilitate the energy transition.
Ian Thomas, Senior Principal Consultant (Sustainable Development and Regulatory Assurance), explains what the idea of collaboration means to him, and how it can propel innovation. He details the need for urgency in collaborative working when supporting the energy transition.
Collaboration for me is deriving better value for the clients and allowing us to think more creatively whilst challenging ourselves. It has been a journey for me - back in the day as part of a department of environmentalists, I was part of a group of 15 people who didn’t speak to anyone.
Nowadays, I can imagine you get two or three specialists working closer together, meaning you get much better value if you work across the board.
Back then, collaborative work used to include handing over unfinished tasks further down the line, and by that point it was often too late to make a meaningful contribution. However, I see collaboration as being involved from the start, to gain better value for the clients as we can identify any problems earlier on.
I’ve worked on several projects where I think the collaborative nature has yielded a much better solution. As a biology student, I know you need the right ecosystem to thrive, and here at Vysus Group we have that fully integrated solution which a lot of our competitors lack.
I was recently supporting on a financial transaction of a refinery in the southern states of America, where it was clear to see how collaboration makes Vysus Group special. We’ve worked with other external organisations in the past such as Deloitte and Arthur D Little, offering our environmental safety due diligence skills. However, this time was different as we were supporting our own asset integrity team to go out and review the asset for sale.
It’s that combined approach which allows us to give better value to our clients, and incidentally allowing us to offer new products and services.
For things to happen, we need to be in alignment. As a microbiologist I’ve seen this before. I’ve recently witnessed conversations around CH4 being used as a hydrogen carrier and how it can be produced by biological means. Yet, I remember studying that 20 years ago!
The technology has been there, and for it to happen the second time round, the political, regulatory and financial factors need to be in alignment.
In times of necessity there is always a need to collaborate, but more often than not people revert to competition. In terms of the international community, I hope we can do things differently this time around as we have a bigger problem to solve.
People can go so far with incremental improvements but every so often there will be a paradigm shift. Something will come out of nowhere, out of left field and that will probably be a discussion with somebody that isn’t in the usual domain.