A new era of sustainability is rising, and it's touching every corner of the world. Consumers in markets big and small are increasingly motivated to be more environmentally conscious and are exercising their power and voice through the products they buy. There is a great deal of environmental awareness being created amongst the inhabitants of this planet earth through various initiations with stringent environmental norms imposed by almost all countries in the world, driving almost every industry to adopt green practice mantra. Naturally, this drive is creating environmental consciousness amongst almost all industries and resulted in providing more opportunities to green consultants. Population explosion and fast urbanization are creating complex environmental problems and enhancing the role of green consultants in overall activities of reducing pollution of various environmental attributes. These have been creating latent demand for environmental consulting services and favouring business growth for environmental consultants like ULTRA-TECH Environmental Consultancy & Laboratory.

Shekar Tamhane, Director
ULTRA TECH works intending to assist consistently in turning this universe into greeniverse. To achieve this, a team of in-house and empanelled experts with knowledge in various aspects of environment, conducts EIA studies for identifying impacts of development projects on the environment even before the implementation of such projects in various project sectors. They then provide mitigation measures to reduce or eradicate impacts on the environment and assist project proponents in obtaining required environmental clearance, CRZ clearance, Forest Clearance and consents for implementing and operation of projects from various statutory authorities as per environmental norms. The team also conducts QRA-HAZOP studies and prepares DMPs for building block industrial and infrastructure projects. Besides, they are providing continuous environmental monitoring of various environmental attributes like air, water, wastewater, soil, sludge apart from generating meteorological data for assessment of environment wherever is required. ULTRA TECH also conducts special studies for preparing environmental Compliance on providing continuous periodical environmental monitoring and suggesting corrective measures for maintaining quality environment.

Deepak Tamhane, Director
The Inception
ULTRA-TECH is the brainchild of Shekhar Tamhane. After his graduation in Chemical Engineering from Bombay, Shekhar worked for several big corporations in India and during this time he realised that the kind of problems started in air and water quality due to fast-growing industrial development in India and rest of the world. After much deliberation, he gave up his well paying job and started an advisory firm, in 1986, for providing consultancy in Environment on having his state of the art built up environmental laboratory for monitoring air, water and soil at several big industries like RCF at Thal, BPCL, HPCL, ONGC and other small and medium firms comprising of Textile, Battery and Lead industries. Shekhar was immensely supported by three like-minded professionals ­ Mrs. Deepa Karnik who is graduated in Environmental Science, Mr. Deepak Tamhane in technical and commercial experience. Niranjan Tamhane, son of shri Shekhar Tamhane, will be taking this legacy ahead.

Naming his business as ULTRA-TECH, with its purpose as Environmental Consultancy and Laboratory, Shekhar started to work closely with polluting industries for providing much-needed consultancy in environmental services for providing solutions to environmental problems. "When the protection of mother planet earth has become a national and international issue due to climate change, stringent environmental rules and regulations have been enforced to reduce and eradicate impacts on air, water and soil quality. This led to the introduction of education in environmental science and technology all over the world and today we are having many environmental experts with much-required qualifications in environmental science and technology," he asserts.

At present, the company provides well-developed service packages with all Government Recognised- Approved and gazetted facilities, expertise, quality accreditations and certifications. It has added ETP/STP/WTP project Management consultancy on turnkey basis providing complete project management solutions to various industries and housing projects including post AMC's of such facilities.

Team Efforts
ULTRA TECH is the confluence of well qualified and experienced environmental experts, engineers, management professionals, engineering and project management experts, laboratory technical experts, sampling and analytical experts spreading in Thane, Pune, Kochi, Kolkata and Delhi branches. These experts directly interact with clients and provide the required services with their expertise. Most of these professionals are ac- credited by NABET confirming their expertise for specific project sectors and functional areas for offering them the much required services in terms of their qualifications and experience required to accomplish the tasks.

The experts work together to accomplish the entire work depending on the scope of work. Let us explain this with an example, taking a development project for obtaining environmental clearance in a specific project sector. The accredited EIA co-ordinator for that project sector becomes the owner of the project and he chooses the required functional area experts for assisting him to complete the impact assessment study. Again, these functional area experts also accredited by NABET for various functional areas and they assist the EIA coordinator on providing their expert reports in their field of expertise on visiting the project site, interacting with clients and coordinating with clients staff to carry out their work," informs Shekhar.

Apart from this, the EIA Coordinator uses environmental laboratory for conducting baseline study on drawing samples of various environmental attributes using well qualified and experienced sampling and analytical team to understand the current status of environment for finding out the deviations in the quality of environmental attributes if the development project will implement at the project site and also finding the impacts of such projects on the environment. On finding out the impacts various experts with their area specific knowledge suggest mitigation measures to reduce or completely mitigate the impacts and finally make draft EIA report and submit to the Ex-pert Appraisal Committees for their evaluation. On hearing the presentation on

the entire EIA study, EACs recommends EC for the project. "This sort of jobs for providing environmental consultancy requires great work culture with the active participation of entire experts and calls for high-end coordination and cooperation amongst almost all departments of an organization," he adds.

Since 2017, ultra-tech has been making efforts to gearing up its activities to achieve the set targets and continuously involves in improving the quality of its services at market affordable prices

The Journey
Since inception, ULTRA TECH has come a long way from where it started. Initially, the company started with few enthusiastic experts in environmental monitoring when there was no scope for much work during the late 1980s except few polluting industries in textile, battery and lead and consulting services were limited to mere advisory and monitoring jobs. This changed drastically at the beginning of this century when planet earth inhabitants realised that the effects of pollution on the environment and survivability of earth planet is becoming more and more vulnerable. Since then, most of the world economies started paying attention to control the effects of green gases on environment and set the environmental norms on exchanging ideas from one another in drawing stringent environmental rules and regulations by bringing air and water Acts. And when environmental problems started, ULTRA TECH visualized the kind of expertise required to accomplish the environmental jobs and since 2000 it is continuously creating expertise via rigorous training and hiring well qualified and experienced experts in various fields. Today it has the strength of 250-300 experts, entirely dedicated to providing environmental services to its clients.

Niranjan Tamhane, Director
The company has grown in many folds since its inception from mere meeting needs of four founder members to taking care of about 250- 300 experts at any given time today and has been maintaining sustainable growth in terms of its revenue. "We are proud to have served to about 3000 clients spread in almost all project sectors, throughout India," he mentions. Initially, the services were catered to only the proximal markets in Maharashtra but from 2010 onwards it expanded its serving capacity to entire India via developing regional branches in Pune, Kochi, Kolkata and Delhi for taking care of western, southern, eastern and northern markets respectively.

Deepa Karnik, Director
What's Next?
In 2012, the company developed a strategic growth plan naming it as ULTRA TECH 2020 based on assumptions of situational analysis comprising SWOT, NEED, GAP and PEEST analysis and was moving accordingly till 2016. However, changes in the political arena, technological advancement and social changes in consumerism hindered the set targets of the company and forced the company to relook into its road map. Then, on much brainstorming, it set target billings for next five years from 2017-18 to 2021-22 on redefining its road map on considering the effects of demonetisation and GST apart from pressure on operations due to accreditations and stringent work methodologies imposed by MoEF for ensuring the quality of green consulting services in India. Since 2017, it has been making efforts to gearing up its activities to achieve the set targets and continuously involves in improving the quality of its services at market affordable prices on improving its work culture and business ethics as per the needs of ever-changing new market demands and high expectations of clients. The company is a stand-alone success in certain areas of green consulting and the thrust has been given to improve these areas of consulting services to achieve the set targets. "We are planning to restructure the entire organization by making it public limited and offering investment opportunities to the tune of 100-120 Crores for optimising the present level of serving capacity in environmental consultancy, environmental laboratory operations and ETP/STP/WTP project management services. We plan to introduce new expertise for services in Solid Waste Management, Bio-medical waste management, Hazardous waste management and much-demanding services in corporate social responsibility as well as a corporate environmental responsibility, environmental compliance and mining sector," concludes Shekhar.

Areas Of Specialization
From mere monitoring and advisory phase at initial stage to offering well defined service packages to environmental markets, today ULTRA-TECH has facilities and expertise

• To cater to seventeen industrial sectors accredited by Quality Council of India [NABET] jointly with MoEF, for conducting environmental impact assessment studies [EIA] and developing environmental management plans [EMP] for development projects
• To provide essential environmental monitoring services having its own well equipped state of the art environmental laboratory with sampling, analytical and lab administration expertise with continuous quality system recognitions by MoEF, NABL and certifications by ISO and OHSAS
• To serve in all functional areas like air and water quality, solid and hazardous waste management, ecology and biodiversity, socio-economy, land use applications, risk of hazardous waste management, geology, hydro-geology, noise and vibration, soil conservation.
• To provide ETP/STP/WTP engineering and project management consultancy on turnkey basis with 24/7 operation and maintenance services
• To cater to clients all over India on developing regional markets in Pune and Thane for western states, Kochi for southern, Kolkata for eastern and Delhi for northern states
• On having associations with various environmental laboratories and accredited organizations for representing clients on joint venture basis
• For providing special environmental studies like QRA, HAZOP, Environmental Due Diligence, Environmental Compliance, Mining Plan for mining industries, Disaster Management plans, Environmental Audits, Social Impact Assessment [SIA], RR, etc.. on regular basis.

At present, the company has provided its environmental consultancy, environmental laboratory and ETP-STP-WTP project management consultancy services to about 2500-3000 clients in various industrial, construction and township development projects. Some of important clients include TATAs, Jet Airways, Raheja, RNA builder, India Bull, DLF, Godrej, Aditya Birla, Piramil, Lodha, Kohinoor, Hiranandani, Reliance, IOCL, HPCL, BPCL, ONGC, JNPT, Kerala Loca Government, KHB, MbPT, BARC, various sugar and distillery industries, thermal power plants, synthetic chemical projects, river valley and irrigation projects, petrochemicals storage projects, ports and harbour projects, highways and railways projects, CETP projects, and many more.

Result-Oriented Services
ULTRA-TECH has been providing services in environmental consulting, environmental laboratory, ETP/STP/WTP engineering and project management and Operation and Maintenance of ETP and STP projects. The service packages of each core functional areas are as follows:

Environmental Clearance Services
• EIA ­ Environmental Impact Assessment
• SIA ­ Social Impact Assessment
• EMP ­ Environment Management Plan
• QRA ­ Quantitative Risk Assessment
• DMP ­ Disaster Management Plan
• RR ­ Rehabilitation and Resettlement
• CRZ ­ Coastal Regulatory Zone Clearances
• FC ­ Forest Clearance
• WLC ­ Wild Life Clearance
• NOCs - Consents from SPCB
• EDD ­ Environmental Due Diligence
• SDD ­ Social Due Diligence
• EA ­ Environmental Audit
• SA ­ Social Audit• ECODD ­ Ecological Due Diligence
• ELAS ­ Environmental Legal Advisory Services
• ESR ­ Environmental Status Reports

Environmental Laboratory Services
• Baseline study
• Environmental monitoring services
• Work place monitoring
• Ambient air monitoring
• Stack emission monitoring
• Post clearance monitoring
• Solid municipal and industrial waste monitoring
• Monitoring of EMP for ports and harbours
• Effluent treatability studies
• Environmental compliance services
• Water, waste water monitoring and analysis

ETP-STP-WTP Engg & Project Consultancy Services
• ETP/STP-WTP on turnkey basis
• ETP/STP revamping
• ETP/STP supply, installation and commissioning
• ETP/STP/WTP design and engineering

ETP-STP Operation And Mentainance Services
• 24/7 O & M services
• STP ­ training services