Any MBA course or business guru will tell you that a business that fails to innovate will inevitably fail. In 30 years, we’ve seen a lot of consultancies do just that. We therefore decided to partner and co-locate with the University of Lancaster at an early stage. It was one of our best and most rewarding decisions!
In our early days we found we could match small real-world projects with keen students who wanted a dissertation that was founded in the real world so they got some valuable experience. We still provide this assistance to 3-4 students a year.
We’ve also helped several businesses scope and deliver their environmental research needs and co-funded two doctoral level (PhD) pieces of research at the largest Environmental Research Centre in the UK.
More recently our MD has been asked to lecture on the University’s Environmental Management Masters Course and the rest of the team and one of our clients provides students with a case study catchment in terms of how to properly manage and monitor water quality and ecological impact on one of the most sensitive catchments in the Lake District.
We sit as an intermediary between industry and research and have delivered a range of innovative cutting-edge research programs. We provide several students with their first real-world ‘fully paid’ internship as well as recruiting at least one graduate post a year to those graduating from Lancaster or any other University.
This is how we keep ourselves ahead of the curve regarding new regulations and development.
Our current student projects we are engaged with:
- The assessment of the impact of a fish farm in Cumbria
- The use of soil type material from waste sites for use as a growing medium for ‘green roofs’
- Potential methods of locking ammonia in sewage losses into non-polluting forms of nitrogen
- Developing systems for assessing levels of impact from sewer spills caused by problem sewer overflows
- The impact of weather (temperature) changes on plastic media filters
- The carbon and nutrient benefits of putting nitrogen and phosphate-rich effluents to land as fertilisers rather than discharging them to sewer
Through Lancaster University’s Centre for Global Eco-Innovation, Peak Associates are able to deliver longer-term research projects through doctoral, masters or Knowledge Exchange Partnerships.
