Chris Cronin
Technical Director of Circular Economy and Environment
Chris Cronin is a Technical Director within the Circular Economy and Environment team. Chris is a Chartered Engineer, a Chartered Environmentalist, and a Chartered Waste Manager and a Registered Engineer on the Engineer of Irelands Historic Landfill Panel. He has over 45 years’ engineering and commercial experience.
Full Bio
Chris’s specialist design expertise includes: Landfill engineering (cells, cap, gas management, leachate treatment, unregulated landfills), channel and pipeline hydraulics, structures (energy dissipation, falls, outfalls, protection works, launching aprons, radial gates, u/s and d/s level control systems) measurement structures, embankment stability, seepage analysis, exit gradient analysis, irrigation, drainage, pump station design, soil conservation and land reclamation.
Chris has extensive project management experience with over 30 years in consultancy and 14 years working for contractors managing landfill and other civil related contracts in Ireland, UK, Thailand, Nigeria, Libya, Egypt, Oman, KSA, Iraq, Swaziland, Malta, UAE and Pakistan. These works typically started with detailed design followed by the preparation of contract documents followed by support during construction and administration as the Engineers Representative on site.
A significant portion of Chris’s FT related work over the last 22 years has been associated with contract administration and support of landfill and waste management related contracts in Ireland and overseas.
Chris has extensive operational experience in Ireland and overseas on municipal solid waste (MSW), inert and hazardous landfills. Chris’s landfill experience includes detailed design, operations and site supervision of: cell development, capping, gas management, landfill gas oxidation (high and low calorific), leachate treatment (SBR, stripping and wetlands), leachate recirculation, odour management and slope stability, restoration, aftercare and landscaping, development of specialist automated reporting systems for licence compliance and data management. Since joining FT in 1999 Chris has developed a reputation as one of Ireland’s leading landfill designers. His cell and capping design work experience has typically concentrated on detailed design, SEW submissions, CQA and construction support. Chris has carried out the design, preparation of contract documents and contract administration on both traditional and design build contracts for both cell and capping restoration contracts.
In 2009, Chris was the Operational Project Manager on the Sajja landfill (2.0 million tonnes per annum) in the UAE where FT managed a changeover between incumbent and new operators. This required audits of the facility, providing the role of facilitator between the incumbent and new operators, and actual running of the facility until such time as the new operator was in a position to actually operate the site.
Chris has been involved in statutory compliance management most notably in cell, capping designs, leachate management and odour related issues for numerous landfill projects.
He has also been involved in innovative design solutions where difficulties have been present in statutory compliance. The most interesting of these would have been stabilising a rotational failure of a landfill body in Tipperary by placing a new cell on a peat bog designed to settle in excess of 2.0 m to stabilise the failure.
Chris has been responsible for leading a team of FT staff in innovating management of environmental data and landfill gas data. He has been instrumental in developing monitoring and automated reporting software at the Arthurstown landfill using MP5 software (MC Certified by UK Environment Agency). This system has also been installed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on a wastewater monitoring project. Chris has also developed proprietary software for landfill gas monitoring and management which is in use at some of our Clients landfills.
Chris was a Co-author of specialist publications financed by the EPA and SEPA for the EPA Guidance Note for Monitoring of Landfill Gas Flares and Engines and the Landfill Technical Information Resource for EPA Ireland. Chris was also project manager and principal author for published Volumes 1 through 5 for Contract GHG emissions from landfills in Scotland 2012 ORI001-001.
He was also an author on the following peer reviewed publications: Techniques for Non Destructive Monitoring of Sub Surface Drains. P Leeds Harrison, RK Fry, CJ Cronin, JE Gregory. Journal of Agric Eng Research 1983 28:479-484; Symposium on Land Drainage for Salinity Control in Arid and Semi Arid Areas, Cairo, February 1990 Mole Drainage Installation for Leaching Purposes, G Spoor, CJ Cronin and PB Leeds Harrison; A management and auditing model for balancing landfill gas extraction. C. J. Cronin, P. Kelly, E. Hanley, T. Ruddy, J. Smith Proceedings Waste 2008; A spread sheet tool to calibrate LANDGEM Gas modelling prediction software for site specific MSW facilities using data from Gas Extraction Audits. C. J. Cronin, P. Kelly, T. Ruddy, D. Smyth, S. Meyler. Proceedings Sardinia 2011. A Spreadsheet Tool to Calculate Landfill Gas Flow Across a Range of Control Valves or to Select Appropriate Valves Based on Design Flows, C. J. Cronin, B Ward, JMc Feat, S Willacy, A Riordan, T Ruddy. ISWA World Conference 2013, Vienna, Austria.