As part of International Women’s Day and Women in Construction Week, we caught up with a few of the many amazing ladies at ERS and asked them what they do for us and what attracted them to their career.
SARAH M has been employed by ERS for 17 years, starting out as an administration assistant before focusing on finance. When the opportunity to move into an HR / Facilities management role arose in 2016, Sarah took up the challenge and has been keeping us all in check since!
Sarah enjoys the buzz of working within a smaller company and the fact that no two days are ever the same. One of the things Sarah loves about her role, particularly with the HR side of it, is that it's constantly growing and changing. From compliance with new laws and legislation, to technology and employee expectations, it's never boring and always challenging.
Sarah is particularly inspired by ERS’ move into employee ownership in 2016. The opportunity to influence innumerable aspects of the organisation, to assist in the development of its employees, and to play a part in influencing business decisions is very exciting for all of us.
VICKI has been working as a Contaminated Land Scientist for 18 years and has been at ERS since 2003. Although originally a Zoology graduate, she went back to do a masters in Environmental Science and became an Environmental Protection Officer with SEPA once she graduated.
She started off in the Glasgow office, then moved to a former office in Bournemouth, did a few years at the Inverness office, and is now based in Jersey, working from home! Although helped in part by a flexible working environment, Vicki has successfully mastered the art of progressing in her career whilst raising a young family.
Vicki has managed numerous contaminated land projects for ERS; her highlights include the grounds of a Scottish Premier League football stadium, a former MOD fuel storage depot and a former paper mill which has now been redeveloped as an Energy Centre for a Scottish University.
Vicki says she loves the diversity of her job and that no two projects are the same.
LIANNE has been with ERS for 6 years, working as an Invasive Weeds Surveyor and tackling a range of invasive plant species, such as Japanese Knotweed, Giant Hogweed and Himalayan Balsam, to name but a few.
Lianne originally comes from a landscaping background, but says she got into invasive weeds when she wanted a new challenge from the run-of-the-mill grass and hedge cutting routine. Now she gets to travel all over Scotland and other parts of the UK, protecting our beautiful country and wildlife from the invasive plants that are trying to take over and out-compete our native species.
The best part of the job for Lianne is being able to enjoy views like the mountains and loch above, and tunnelling through a huge stands of Japanese Knotweed and other towering invasives, all the while knowing she is making a difference to protect the country’s beautiful scenery.
AMY is one of ERS’s Technical Specialists. Her expertise is asbestos, so she is involved in many of ERS’ site investigation and remediation projects given the prevalence of asbestos on UK Brownfield sites. She is also ERS’ waste classification expert.
Amy’s degree is in Geology and she also trained as an asbestos surveyor. Amy entered the contaminated land industry in 2003, and has now been with ERS for 7 years. Although her role is now mainly office based, she does still occasionally get to don full asbestos PPE, as modelled in the photo!
Amy says that on this International Women’s Day, she is proud to work for a company in which women are employed in a variety of roles, including many on-site roles, in what some still view as a male-dominated industry.
TOBIE is ERS’ BD and Marketing Co-ordinator. She’s a relatively new member of the ERS team having started last February, and says it hasn’t been easy getting established at a new company during the pandemic with furlough and working from home thrown in the mix!
Tobie’s role involves searching for new leads and opportunities, managing the company social media channels and she’s recently finished setting up our new website (she hopes you like it). She is also working on advertising and print materials to reach new markets and promote our wide service range.
Tobie’s degree is in Biotechnology, so she is particularly interested in ERS’ bioremediation projects. But as there weren’t many graduate opportunities available, she went back to uni to do a masters in Business and went on to work in various marketing and other roles in the UK, Japan and Australia, before retraining and specialising in digital marketing.
Tobie says she loves her new life in Scotland (lockdown aside) and particularly enjoys working for ERS because of the company’s focus on developing sustainable remediation options, and because their work to remediate contaminated brownfield sites across the UK facilitates regeneration and improves urban communities.
TANYA is ERS’ Quality Manager and has been working for us since 2017. Previously, she worked for many years in Project Management, then later made the step over to work in Quality.
In smaller companies like ERS, she says the employees have to wear many different hats. For Tanya, that means she is also involved in project admin functions and takes care of the Duty of Care reports. Although her work is mostly office based, she gets to communicate with all teams and staff, both on-site and in the office.
Tanya says the work she does is very varied, and there are so many big and small challenges which she enjoys. Most of all, the fact that she makes a positive contribution to the work of the company and her colleagues, gives her a great deal of satisfaction.
GEMMA and SARAH O are the two female members of ERS’ Site Investigation Team. Gemma joined us in 2014 and Sarah in 2019.
Gemma and Sarah both did Geology at the University of Glasgow, and have been working for ERS since they graduated, having chosen to follow a career in the brownfield land regeneration sector.
They kindly sent in this socially distanced selfie from their latest project, where they are doing a site investigation of a disused railway line which will be turned into part of Sustrans’ 1,643 mile long National Cycle Network across Scotland.