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Careers Construction Ecology sustainability Training

CEEQUAL Assessor Course

Finally completed my CEEQUAL assessor course last week. This was something I signed up for when CIRIA made me redundant last year but with one thing and another I hadn’t managed to have free time to coincide with a course in London. Still the work I have been doing in the meantime meant that I was a bit more of an expert when it came to the ecology section.

I was pleased to discover that most of my civil engineering knowledge remained intact. In fact working on the M25 widening project meant I had much more experience of projects in action than previously.

They pushed us quite hard over the two days, not surprising really given the breadth of topics we had to cover. The section on energy seemed a bit vague at first but I suppose I had the advantage of doing a course on energy the week before (see last post). I think for a lot of companies it will be the first time they have thought about energy and carbon during construction and particularly in use.

The assessment divides into 12 categories starting with the project management which underpins it all and then looking at different areas of environmental performance in a civil engineering project. Ecology, for instance  deals with all the improvements you can make and also avoiding any problems you can get like Japanese Knotweed and how they are dealt with. The methodology is a bit like the waste hierarchy, you score highest for not removing environmental features but you can make things back by introducing mitigation strategies and making improvements around the project.

Having learnt all this I am eager to get started on an assessment either for Ecology Consultancy or as a freelancer so let me know if you need one doing. I can also assess a project quite quickly and let you know how it might perform.

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Careers Construction sustainability Training

The Green Register

Completed the final free module of my course at the University of Westminster. They managed to persuade The Green Register to run a course for us. It was definitely the most rewarding   course and it qualifies all the delegates to become members of their organisation.

We covered a wide range of topics from the basics of life cycle analysis to an in depth look at analysing the performance of different renewable energy technologies. It seems that Solar Thermal is about the most efficient way of generating energy at the moment, unless you happen to live on a hill and have a stream flowing past your house in which case a waterwheel is even better.

The course really covered a lot of useful stuff for sustainable construction and particularly helped me fill in some energy related knowledge gaps. There was also one module on the Code for sustainable homes which came over as quite a long way behind compared to the things we had learnt elsewhere on the course. Still at least it is encouraging people to improve their performance whether they want to or not.

Met up with some friends from previous courses too, I think we all liked this one best. A number of them are participating in projects as part of the course but I will only be able to go along to any fringe events now as I have used up my quota.

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Careers Ethical trade international development sustainability Training

Green careers event

Spent last night at SOAS in London for a green careers evening organised by Positive Change and People Unlimited. Quite entertaining if a little long. There was a wide range of speakers including Blanche Cameron of Reset Development who included a picture of me at the green roofs event we organised earlier in the summer as part of her presentation. Always a little disturbing to see yourself unexpectedly on the screen but at least I wasn’t yawning in the picture.

Most of the speakers agreed that volunteering was the best way to get yourself a green career, good advice to those starting out not sure I want to carry on volunteering until I have a bigger income coming in though. One thing all the speakers had in common was a tremendous enthusiasm for their jobs. Caroline Scott of Islington Council was particularly keen and started by picking up on other presenters negativity to Local Councils generating much laughter and applause.

The final speaker from Worldview Impact, Bremley was particularly inspiring with his rubber tree plantations and pursuit of his dream.