WBM work for many of the major minerals companies in the UK, as well as for Mineral Planning Authorities, on a wide range of surface mineral and related workings including extraction and processing, concrete batching plants, asphalt coating plants and dry silo mortar plants.

WBM has extensive experience of noise aspects relating to mineral extraction and waste disposal. Projects in the past twenty years include over five hundred mineral and waste disposal related sites developed at greenfield sites and in industrial areas or as extensions to existing operations. The advice that WBM provides is designed to allow operators of such sites to be able to work them without significant complaints and interruption. Our work with Mineral Planning Authorities has resulted in confidence that both operators and planners can work with the same standards to protect the environment.

WBM developed noise criteria for mineral sites that have been used as the basis for national guidance. Those noise criteria have stood the test of time and early sites now have second generation extensions for which noise is no longer a contentious planning issue. Coupled with the setting of sensible criteria, our computer modelling allows all types of mineral site to be optimised within those external noise constraints.

Reports, where necessary, are backed up by competent professional evidence at public inquiries and planning appeals. WBM have been involved in well over one hundred Planning Appeals and Public Inquiries in the last twenty years and have contributed to over one hundred environmental assessments, many of them relating to surface mineral working sites.