The team behind Poseidon - Episode 1

Hello and welcome to our new blog series!

This blog series has been devised to allow you to understand our products and services so that you can be better prepared against flooding.

Who are we?

Poseidon is the product of a long term friendship between Kris Rhodes and Glen Middleton. We met in 2003 whilst working together in the design teams for one of the UK's largest flood risk management schemes.

Unusually at the time of meeting neither of us knew a great deal about flood defenses. We have been brought into the team because of our design experience pertaining to different areas of engineering. From working together on a daily basis our friendship blossomed as we found that we had many things in common such as attending the same school and an overlap in friendship circles.

During our working together we often talked about setting up a company together. A company different to other companies. We wanted to do something which helped the community and was focussed on being 'less corporate'. Our vision was to create something which was simple, no nonsense and honest. That is not to say that our employer at the time was not any of these but we felt that getting closer to the customer was critical to being a good company.

We wanted to be more helpful and less commercial.

Despite many discussions about setting up our own company our personal lives pulled us in different directions. In 2005 Kris relocated to New Jersey to pursue a career as a project manager in wireless telecommunications. Whereas Glen remained in the UK to pursue a career as a project manager in flood risk management.

Despite a separation of over 3000 miles the friendship remained strong and we were in contact regularly, still discussing a potential coming together at some point in the future.

In the years between 2005 and 2014 we both became heavily immersed in our own areas of expertise. Kris was heading up the design of major wireless telecommunications programs in New York and Glen was leading the design of multi award winning UK flood risk management projects. We had become so immersed in our own lives that our plans for a joint company were looking to be more of a dream than something achievable.

That was until 2015. A moment of madness from both of us had us working together again. Kris had set up his own wireless telecommunications design consultancy and was looking at expanding capabilities. Glen had also set up his own UK based design consultancy and we started working together again. Between 2005 and 2014 we delivered many large wireless telecommunications together.

We were the 'dream team' and had the privilege of working for some very high profile clients. If you ever go to New York and use your cell phone there is a high probability that the infrastructure that you are using was designed by us.

Whilst working together we often reminisced about our plans to set up a company together but due to outside work commitments the time was never right. Kris had relocated to Florida and was working on more telecommunications work programs whereas Glen was involved in major flood risk schemes again back in the UK.

October 2024 is what brought us back together. Glen was on vacation in Florida visiting Kris and we were both hit with hurricane Milton. We both experienced first hand the destruction, disruption and heartache brought on by Milton and the resultant storm surge.

It was at this point that we agreed that we needed to do something to help people. This was the seed for Poseidon.

It was our calling! Poseidon was the business that we had waited 20 years for.

The birth of Poseidon was finally our opportunity to set up a simple, no nonsense and honest business which would allow for us to help people. The bonus being that we both now had 20 years of experience and specialist skills to bring.

Poseidon was set up in 2025 to make our dreams a reality and is here to help you!

What are we?

What is Poseidon?

This is a good question!

Here at Poseidon we are specialist in flood risk management. In our careers we have designed and managed the construction of impounding dams, bridges, flood defense walls, flood defense embankments, weirs, culverts, scour protection and drainage networks. As a result of our past experience we understand river channel breaches, surface water sheet flows and tidal flood surges.

More importantly we understand that the planning, design, construction of formalized flood protection measure costs a fortune. We know that home owners and small businesses don't have tens of millions of dollars to construct major flood defense assets.

We are engineers and love the appearance of big concrete structure but we appreciate that most people do not share the same opinion.

That is why we set up Poseidon.

The most affordable way to protect home owners and small businesses is through installing demountable and temporary flood defense structures in locations which are unique to each property. We think our solutions look great but the benefit of demountable and temporary flood defense structures is that they only need to be used when there is an imminent risk of flooding. This means the vista from your property can remain unadulterated until you need to be protected.

In addition deploying demountable and temporary flood defense structures only when required reduces likelihood of them being accidentally damaged when not being used.

Here at Poseidon we are able to help you select an appropriate and affordable flood defense solution which suits your own individual requirements.

Furthermore temporary flood defense structures are movable.

Moving home?

No problem!

You can always consult us to know if your temporary flood defense structures can move with you to your new home or business.

The 'big consultants' design flood defense for big clients. We know this doesn't always provide protection to everyone.

Here at Poseidon we design flood defense solutions for you.

Want a community based solution?

No problem!

Here at Poseidon we can design a solution for that too.

Thanks for reading.

Our next episode will feature details of flooding sources and a product spotlight.

Thanks

Kris & Glen