Employee Spotlight: October 2021

Immaculate Venance shortlisted for AfriSAFE award

Immaculate Venance, SHEQ Manager at RSK Tanzania, has been shortlisted for the AfriSAFE Awards 2021. The annual awards celebrate the “best of health, safety, security and wellbeing” across the continent and recognise individual and organisational commitments to furthering health and safety in their industries. Representing a diverse range of professional industries from construction to manufacturing, the Africa Safety Award for Excellence (AfriSAFE) presents awards to nominees in 19 categories and is sponsored by the UK Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH).

The Professional of the Year category, for which Immaculate is shortlisted, acknowledges the achievements of individuals in the HSSE space “whose enthusiasm, knowledge and drive” have made a valuable contribution to their workplaces’ health, safety, wellbeing and security. Immaculate’s commitment to the Stop, Think, Act and Review (STAR) safety protocol for ensuring safe working environments and practices was recognised by the awards panel. Implementing the STAR procedure ensured a safe working environment for Immaculate and her colleagues. Stopping unsafe work, and working together to develop a safe process, ensured the safety of colleagues and contractors on their projects.

Congratulations to Immaculate on her nomination!

Chartership successes for Geosciences and Structural Soils

It has been a bumper end to the summer for our geosciences professionals, as an impressive five staff members were awarded chartership in September.

Kirsty Summers, Principal Geo-Environmental Consultant, and Saskia Richards, Senior Geo-Environmental Engineer in the RSK Geosciences Derby team, are both now registered as Chartered Environmentalists after successfully achieving chartership with the Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES). Following the preparation of professional reports to demonstrate they had met the required competencies, both chose to attend a chartership workshop run by IES that gave further clarity and support with their reports before a formal interview. This is a thoroughly deserved recognition of their hard work and a fantastic achievement.

Emma Hobbs and Roseanna Bloxham, senior geo-environmental engineers at RSK Geosciences, and Catherine Tame, Senior Geo-Environmental Engineer at Structural Soils, have all successfully achieved chartered status with the Geological Society. Catherine and Roseanna have been elected Chartered Geologists, whereas Emma has achieved Chartered Scientist status.

Emma has been with the Manchester-based geosciences team for the last seven years and has been working towards her chartership for the last four. Roseanna has been with the Hemel Hempstead-based geosciences team since 2011 and, more recently, started work with RGM Environment in South Africa. Roseanna has been working on her chartership for the last three years with support and assistance from mentor Ray Watson. Catherine is part of the for Structural Soils major projects team, based in the Tonbridge office, and was previously with RSK Geosciences for several years. Achieving chartered status has been a long-term goal for Catherine, especially after finishing her PhD last year.

On achieving her chartership, Emma said, “I have been working towards becoming chartered with the Geological Society for almost 4 years. Following maternity leave, I felt a renewed motivation and put in the hours to complete the application form and finally finish writing my personal statement. After much preparation for the interview and with the support and assistance of colleagues at RSK, I obtained my goal of becoming a Chartered Scientist. It was a long and sometimes arduous process, but it was well worth it. I would recommend to younger colleagues who wish to become chartered that they start the process earlier rather than later as there are a lot of aspects to consider.”

Roseanna said of her achievement, “The initial process of putting together the application was an exciting challenge. The process of going through past projects and training was an eye-opener to see how much we learn post-university. I had the initial aim of achieving chartership in 2019 but kept pushing this target back owing to work commitments. My advice to anyone wanting to obtain a chartered status is do not put it off; you should always make time to achieve your goals.”

Congratulations to Kirsty, Saskia, Catherine, Emma and Roseanna on achieving their charterships!

Award wins at the CIEEM Awards 2021

Paola Reason, Director, and Mark Lang, Associate Director of  RSK Biocensus have won, respectively, an award and a commendation in the Member of the Year category at this year’s Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) Awards. The Member of the Year Award is presented to individuals who have shown a strong commitment to protecting and enhancing the natural world through their work.

Presented on 19 October, Paola won the award for her work on developing ecological assessment guidance where surveying had been directly affected by COVID-19 restrictions. Paola’s work on the project was central to the development of the new CIEEM guidance to find safe ways of working amid the restrictions. In addition, as a recognised bat specialist with 30 years of experience, Paola has also been hard at work alongside Stephanie Wray, Managing Director at Nature Positive, co-authoring significant national guidelines on bat mitigation on behalf of CIEEM. She recently gave one of our First Thursday webinars on these guidelines; if you missed the presentation, you can find it here.

Mark is an expert ornithologist with more than 20 years’ experience of conducting bird surveys. He received his commendation for his voluntary work as an assessor for the institute: Mark assesses applications to the CIEEM for Chartered Ecologist and Chartered Environmentalist status, as well as providing policy advice and training for ecologists.

The awards day also recognised new fellows of the CIEEM, and three of the four collecting their fellowship certificates were RSK Biocensus directors Paola, Tim Hounsome and Jon Davies.

Congratulations Paola and Mark on your awards, and Paola, Tim and Jon on your fellowships!