Richards, Moorehead & Laing Ltd

16/07/2026

We are looking for an enthusiastic and dedicated Senior or Principal in both Landscape Architecture and Ecology disciplines, to be based in our Ruthin Office, Denbighshire to provide support to the wider multi-disciplinary team, act as Environmental Coordinator and lead on Landscape and Ecology elements of infrastructure and other projects. If you are interested check out our website and get in touch.

Meet the RML team

25/06/2026

Following on from our recent post about dormice, one of our staff members, volunteers monitoring populations on a few sites locally and a regular visit was completed recently. Since he first started on one of the sites, initially training for his own licence, there has been a noticeable decline in the numbers of animals recorded, especially in recent years. This has led to he and other volunteers asking what could the possible reason/s be?
• Is it due to an increase in mortality rates,
• Is it an increase in predators in the area,
• Have the animals simply just found better habitat than where the boxes are currently positioned?
• Is it woodland management,
• Maybe it’s survey frequency, perhaps we should be surveying only in the autumn and not peak breeding season,
• Or could it be changes to our climate in that winters are milder, are the animals waking from their hibernation earlier with little or no food sources at the time and then being caught in a late cold snap in spring?

Answers on a postcard please! 😊

01/06/2026

Coordinating is good for us.

Experience tells us that the Environmental Coordinator’s role in construction calls for wide experience, first and foremost, in design. Design experience is important since involvement in design, and experience in formulating design intent, fosters an ability to understand and solve other people’s problems; not a bad attribute for a team member to demonstrate. Secondly, landscape architects seem to fit the bill perfectly provided they have a good understanding of and long experience of working with civil engineers. Engineers have frequently displayed a reluctance to learn from any ‘outsider’ and their reputation as a caring profession has suffered as a result. Landscape Architects are equipped to provide depth and breadth of understanding of a place and its environment. Place-making, sustainability, active travel, 15-minute neighbourhoods and carbon sequestration are all matters that engineers like to be involved with, but Landscape architects bring skills that support engineers in creating something even better. This understanding is the essence of a holistic view. This welding of the essence of an environment with the need to disturb and reinstate/repair it, to create a satisfying result, relies a great deal more on marrying diverse practices than on scientific knowledge. Achieving this marriage by appropriate counselling is where coordinators display their real worth.

22/05/2026

Dormice surveys

Dormice are protected species and timely surveys are needed to determine their presence or absence on a site where construction activities are proposed. On a local site, RML have established over 100 ‘tubes, tunnels and boxes’. The tubes and boxes are for recording their distinctive nest construction and the tunnels are to record the footprints of any animals that pass through them. Dormice, along with many other animals, have distinctive footprints. Each tunnel will be examined for footprints on a 2-weekly basis until the end of September.

07/05/2026

A Lumpy Business 🏗️

In specialist businesses, work doesn't trickle in — it arrives in big lumps. And that's something to embrace!

At RML, we've always believed that quality speaks for itself. After years where lowest price ruled the day, we're seeing a welcome shift — clients are once again valuing reputation and recommendations from satisfied customers.

Whether it's a Friday deadline or an expanded scope, we welcome every challenge. Because being trusted enough to get the call? That's what being in business is all about.

29/04/2026

What Does a Dream Client Look Like?

After 41 years in the construction industry, we know exactly what makes a great working relationship — and it's simpler than you'd think.

The best clients? They brief clearly, agree the scope upfront, give written instructions, and pay on time. In return, we'll stand on our heads for them. It really is that straightforward.

Cash is king in any business, and in construction the payment culture hasn't always had the best reputation. But we've been lucky to work with some fantastic clients over the years — the kind who come back again and again because the relationship works both ways. Mutual respect, clear communication, fair dealing. That's the formula.

So if you're looking for a consultancy that values partnership as much as you do, let's talk.

24/04/2026

At RML, we believe the best business is built on relationships that stand the test of time. We're proud that one of our clients from 1994 still turns to us for advice every year — and that kind of loyalty means everything.

Over more than four decades in the construction industry, we've seen the landscape (ha ha!) shift and evolve. Through it all, what's kept us going is simple: we show up, we deliver, and we look after the people we work with. That we do so doing interesting work in diverse locations and with the aim to look after the environment in various ways is even better. That commitment to strong, trusted partnerships has carried us through every challenge the industry has thrown our way.

09/04/2026

Spring has come

It is the 8th April, and after storm Dave has passed through Spring really does seem to have appeared. We need some rain!! Enquiries related to ecological work have warmed up too, but what strikes us so memorably is how the working environment has changed a great deal. Work patterns and the work itself is so different. In the ‘old days’ when the much-loved Welsh Development Agency (WDA) was a source of work it was always immediately after Xmas that Ivor remembers how enquiries would come flooding in along the lines of ‘How much can we spend before April 6th’. Pleasing the client was important, so designs and tender documents were rushed out, contracts awarded, planning permissions obtained and certificates valuing work done by the contractors were prepared in advance. We often worked long hours into the night.

The focus of our world is now the environment, and much of it goes to sleep in the winter months but bursts into activity once April is with us. Clients are needing, and regulators are demanding, assessments of the nature, extent and quality of a wide range of environmental features. Assessing the impact of whatever today’s engineers want to do and how it can be accommodated without causing undue harm is important, Night working is one thing that is still with us, but cameras can be left overnight and during the day too, to record who or what enters our ‘field of interest’. We have developed our own AI-based programmes to analyse the hours of filming that we produce.

02/04/2026

In 2026 we continue to support our clients through ever more complex planning applications and statutory procedures for a wide variety of projects, some in highly sensitive locations and settings. Increasingly this involves RML producing additional information such as shadow Habitat Regulations Assessment (sHRA). It is called a shadow HRA as the authority would normally produce the HRA themselves but are increasingly asking the applicant to provide one for them as the ‘Competent Authority’ to consider adopting. It is designed to help the decision-maker carry out the formal Habitats Regulations Assessment required under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 (as amended) where a plan or project may affect a protected European site. The ‘Competent Authority’ is the public body that has to make the decision, such as a local planning authority, a permitting body or, in some cases, a Minister or inspector. The protected sites most commonly considered are SACs (Special Areas of Conservation, designated for important habitats and non-bird species), SPAs (Special Protection Areas, designated for important bird species), and Ramsar sites (wetlands of international importance, which in Wales and the UK are generally afforded equivalent protection through policy).

27/03/2026

Two views of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a frequent item in the news these days and is often about the impact which AI will have, and is having, on jobs. One reads in the business pages of newspapers of large organisations such as international banks considering laying off tens of thousands of staff. The authors of these articles describe these events as being due to the impact of Artificial Intelligence taking over ‘backroom activities’

The contrary view is that the impact of AI will soon lead to the creation of vast numbers of jobs as new applications are developed and this reminds us that the world has experienced similar effects when the canals, railways, machines and electricity were introduced.

At RML we are involved in this in our own small way. We have produced our own program for managing mail for our own internal benefit. But we have been busy too producing programs for analysing thermographic film records of bats flying at night and trail camera film records of animals which visit sites that are of interest to us and our clients. We see the benefit of improving the accuracy of our site surveys in improving the products that we can offer clients.