Reflections on being a Graduate Ecologist. Part 2; Office Skills
In Part 1 of this series I focussed on a few insights into how to develop your skills as a field ecologist. Here, I look at the parallel skills required back at the office.
Part 2: Office skills
Field skills form the backbone of what we do as consultant ecologists, but can be wasted if they’re not backed up by good office skills. Office skills are critically important to achieving successful project outcomes, but they don’t often receive the focus they deserve.
It may seem obvious, but good discipline in collating and organising your survey data as you go is vital. Nonetheless, in the peak season it’s easy to drop the ball. Make a habit of checking over your data when you get in from the field (particularly the metadata), file field notes straight away, and keep track of survey progress. Although you may not have to worry about the implications too much as a graduate, developing good habits will keep you on the right side of your manager and will stand you in good stead later down the line. For example, you might be managing a big project where it will undoubtedly save you time and stress when you come to write-up (tip: if others have carried out surveys you’re managing, check their data immediately. Even experienced surveyors aren’t infallible, and reaching the end of a field season to find the surveys have not been executed or recorded properly is not a good feeling!). On the other end of the spectrum, you may want to go freelance, where good data management is arguably even more vital because it will help to ensure you get repeat work.
Where most early-career ecologists are likely to stumble is in their report writing. There is usually pressure to turn reports around quickly, which frequently leads to mistakes. It goes without saying, but you should be diligent with your spelling, grammar and formatting. A sloppy report looks unprofessional and will, subconsciously if not consciously, make the reader more critical of both your report and your fieldwork. Be wary of ‘standard text’ in reports: check over it each time, because each scenario is different, and you may find the text is not appropriate or needs tweaking. Your report will ultimately be reviewed by a planning officer, and in some situations even by lawyers. You don’t want to find yourself in that situation having written something factually incorrect.
More insidiously, time pressure can prevent you from improving your report writing. Make sure you always obtain specific feedback and comments from the person reviewing your reports (track changes and comments in Word are invaluable). The reviewer will also be time-pressured, but in the long run it will make their life easier if they take the time to develop your reporting skills. If they’ve made a comment or change you don’t understand or disagree with, take the initiative and discuss it with them; those are the times when you learn the most. And when you come to review reports for others, make sure you do the same for them. The review process is as much about professional development as it is about getting the report right, and should be treated as such.
It’s not unlikely that at some point you will find yourself having to report on a mistake you made in the field, or some other limitation you’d rather not draw attention to. If you’re a conscientious graduate these situations will feel very uncomfortable, but in the majority of cases such limitations can be justified as not having affected the overall conclusions of the report, or at least can be taken account of with a conservative approach to data interpretation. Therefore, be honest in your reporting. If you hide something, it could come back to bite you when a member of the public wants to object to the development – or worse, during the construction stage! In rare cases you might find yourself pressured by senior staff to make changes you feel aren’t justified. Discuss it with them – there might be a good reason after all – but don’t be afraid to stick to your guns, and talk to another senior colleague about it if you need to. Ultimately, it’s your name on that report.
More often, you might find that your report doesn’t have the impact you hoped for, particularly if you work for a larger consultancy on big projects, where your baseline reports will go through several people before being assimilated into an Environmental Statement. You’re unlikely to be involved in those later stages, so you need to make sure the key information is communicated clearly and concisely from the beginning. The issue of clarity and conciseness is perhaps most likely to be a stumbling block if you are prone to writing very detailed reports. This can at times prove a weakness rather than the strength it ought to be, with key findings becoming lost in the detail, so it’s worth keeping the bigger picture in mind as you’re writing. In an Environmental Statement each ecological receptor (e.g. a species or a designated site that could potentially be impacted by the development) is assigned a value – normally based on its rarity within a defined geographical area – and a magnitude of impact of the development. For example, if you have a species that is rare in the West Midlands region but is a long way from the development it will have a high value (at least regional value), but there will likely be a low magnitude of impact. It may be helpful to make these two things obvious to the reader if you can, although you should be careful to make sure your facts are correct when doing this. Bear in mind that scheme designs have an unhelpful habit of changing over the course of a project, too. Presenting geographical population data alongside your survey data can be useful in highlighting the value of species if your report structure allows; too often evaluations are not based solidly on available population data. If a high value species is close or connected enough to be affected by the scheme, make its location clear. Thinking and writing with a view to evaluation in this way will stand you in good stead when you come to write assessment reports yourself, and the knowledge of distribution and populations you gain will be invaluable.
On the topic of detail, it is worthwhile thinking carefully about the purpose of your report, the type of development and your audience before you begin. Discuss this with your supervisor in the first instance. They will often be able to provide you with a similar report you can use as a guide or template. A baseline report for a scheme which requires Environmental Impact Assessment will need to be detailed and thorough as it forms the basis for further work and assessment, and will be scrutinised publicly. Conversely, small permitted development schemes may only require a brief summary of findings; again, going into too much detail could mean that key information is lost, and may cause budget issues too. Having started my career working mainly on large or high-profile schemes I was used to writing detailed reports, and as a result I struggled with the switch to my first reports on much smaller schemes. You are likely to need practice writing reports at either end of the spectrum before you become proficient, and as a Graduate Ecologist it is useful to ensure you get exposure to both. This breadth of experience can be hard to gain in consultancies at the ends of the size spectrum. However, in a large consultancy your exposure to reporting for major projects will stand you in good stead, and is something small consultancies are unlikely to provide.
Whilst a large consultancy will tend to give you experience of a few large projects, the number of projects you are exposed to will be greater if you work for a small consultancy. This is a reflection of project complexity – time to project completion and turnaround time for deliverables on small projects is typically a lot shorter. Consequently, you will gain reporting experience much more rapidly in a small consultancy, but potentially in less depth. At the other end of the scale, working for a very large consultancy can also produce similar results, as you may find yourself writing too few reports for your skills to continually progress. You will notice that these patterns are similar to those affecting field skills development, discussed in Part 1[JG1] . In my experience, however, the most important factor affecting your office skills development – aside from your own diligence – is the person who reviews your reports. If they do a good job and take the time to mentor you through it, you will develop much more effectively.
