GEOtest: More Than 50 Years in Business
In 2018, GEOtest celebrated 50th anniversary of its foundation. The Company's success stems primarily from high-quality human and professional background. The main competitive advantage of the Company is the fact that thanks to great efforts, even in difficult times, GEOtest managed to maintain a multidisciplinary and wide range of services. Moreover, the Company was able to extend these services according to the current market needs. GEOtest offers services to clients through its companies in the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mongolia, Romania, and Slovakia. Since 2017, GEOtest has been a member of the INOGEN global environmental alliance. Headquartered in the United States, this prestigious international alliance associates more than 200 major environmental companies worldwide.
The substance of GEOtest has always lain in geological services, especially engineering-geological and geotechnical surveys for road construction and ecological services, which have always been dominated by remediation of so-called old environmental loads. At the beginning of the new millennium, the Company began to expand beyond the territory of the Czech Republic. Therefore, it was necessary to adapt GEOtest's services to the needs of the global market. The Company thus began to provide a wide range of services in the field of sustainable development, i.e. services related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). As for this type of service, the GEOtest´s clients are prestigious international institutions, such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the European Commission (EuropeAid), the World Bank (WB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Investment Bank (EIB), and development programmes such as the Czech Development Cooperation (CZECHAID), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and other.
Energy and Renewable Resources
Services in the field of energy, and in particular, renewable energy, are related to SDG No. 7, Affordable and Clean Energy. GEOtest has participated in a number of projects involving the supply of renewable energy technologies such as biomass boilers and solar collectors. However, the main focuses of the Company are geothermal and water renewable energy sources. For both of these types of renewable resources, GEOtest conducts a multidisciplinary survey, offering geological, hydrogeological, geophysical, drilling, laboratory, and other services. The Company has always been seeking to obtain a comprehensive picture of potentially suitable sites. This year, the Company is implementing a major contract in Bosnia and Herzegovina, performing a detailed survey of geothermal energy sources in the City of Cazin. Based on its results, GEOtest will be tasked with developing scenarios for the development of this renewable energy source for the needs of spa tourism, agriculture, and heating. From the point of view of water renewable energy sources, the Company is mainly providing surveys, feasibility studies, environmental impact studies, and other tasks for construction of dams. A major challenge was, for example, the project in northern Iraq, where GEOtest successfully carried out a feasibility study and design project for the Bawanur Dam. Services provided for multinational energy companies such as ČEZ and E.O.N. are located on the energy and environment sectors boundary. In the first case this concerns supervision of boreholes for monitoring the quality of groundwater at the Dukovany nuclear power plant and in the second case comprehensive consultancies for the environmentally conscious operation of individual power plant facilities.
Environment
In the environmental field, the GEOtest´s flagship is the environmental remediation. The main activity in this area is the removal of groundwater and rock environment contamination. Recent projects include removal of oil spill contamination from groundwater in the Romanian city of Oradea for OMV Petrom as well as survey and project development for an oil-contaminated area in Novi Sad, Serbia for Gazprom Neft. The remediation work for the car manufacturer ŠKODA, for which GEOtest provides removal of old environmental loads at the factory premises, is a long-term contract. GEOtest's experts have a lot of experience in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Environmental, Health & Safety (EHS) audits for multinational corporations such as IBM, Amazon, Apple, Škoda and many others, also play an important role in providing environmental services.
Today's GEOtest is a complex company providing a wide range of services across a number of disciplines. The services provided are always tailored to customer needs. Thanks to the ever-expanding range of quality services, the Company has been able to adapt to the needs of the modern market and has successfully established itself in the highly competitive environment for more than 50 years.
Damir Kasum and Jan Hillermann
GEOtest, a.s. - A member of INOGEN
Šmahova 1244/112, 627 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Phone: +420 548 125 496
e-mail: hillermann [at] geotest [dot] cz
www.geotest.cz