Our founding father, Mr Bernard Smisson, designed the very first vortex overflow in England in the 1960s. Faced with space constraints while trying to construct a conventional side weir overflow, he developed a circular weir overflow configuration. Hydrodynamic vortex separation technology was born.

In the 1970s, Mr Smisson was invited to the US as an advisor to the AWWA and EPA, which culminated in the development of the Swirl Concentrator. He later returned to the UK to continue his pioneering research on vortex technology where he addressed the issues of high headloss and solids deposition and refined the design of the hydrodynamic vortex separator to the advanced hydrodynamic vortex separators and complementary technologies of today.

For over a decade we have also been promoting source control and what are now commonly known as Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS).

The publication by Hydro International (then Hydro Research and Development Ltd) of ‘Urban Drainage - The Natural Way’ in 1993 chronicled the results of a two-day conference held at Oxford University during June 1992 (Conflo ‘92). This conference brought together a cross-section of people concerned with the impacts on the natural water environment of stormwater run off from urban development and considered how these impacts might be reduced by the application of source control and SuDS techniques. Many of the methods of providing source control were described in detail within the publication and reference was even made to the use of honeycomb plastic structures below permeable pavements in Europe, several years before the introduction of Stormcell® into the UK by Hydro.