This blog is written by Rick Saville, a geotechnical engineer who has worked in consultancy in the UK for over ten years. Rick is passionate about his home county of Yorkshire; he sits on the council of the Yorkshire Geological Society (YGS) and the steering group of the Yorkshire Contaminated Land Forum (YCLF). Contact Rick on Twitter @RickJSaville.
I’ve worked in the geoscience consultancy industry since 2007 (that makes me feel old, writing that!), after graduating from the University of Hull in the UK with a BSc in Environmental Science in July 2006. I’ve always loved the natural world and my degree was a great, broad base to start from.
I’m the director of a geoscience consultancy called Abbeydale Building Environment Consultants (Abbeydale BEC for short). We’re a small team of geotechnical and geo-environmental consultants. Geoscience is involved in many aspects of construction and development and, in a nutshell, geotechnical consultants get hired to look at everything to do with the ground!
When a company starts a building project, they need to know about the ground conditions and what they should do to make the site safe and suitable for use when the project is finished. They also want to reduce the delays that occur due to unforeseen conditions during construction projects. That’s where geoscience consultants come in.
We get involved in a range of projects, of different sizes and for different reasons. We may be involved in the construction of houses, or if a retaining wall needs repairing or replacing if it collapses or is damaged. A Local Authority may contact us during road development if they need an independent person to check the technical details before a new road is adopted or if they need any specialist support. We also get involved with designing earthworks for construction, such as keeping excavations below the groundwater table dry and making sure that materials are suitable for their intended use.
We often look at both the geotechnical aspects, such as if any historical mine workings are present (and if they might affect the site if they collapse!) or if there’s a risk related to slope stability. We also get involved with environmental issues, such as any contamination of soils and groundwater at a site. I was always drawn to both geotechnical and environmental issues, and am happy that I didn’t have to give either up to focus on one or the other.
One of the best parts of my job is the diversity. Life in a small geoscience consultancy is a good mix of office-based activities and work out in the field, and a mix of many different topics, which definitely keeps us on our toes. No two jobs are ever quite the same! There are many paths that you can take in this industry, and even after becoming a Chartered Geologist (CGeol)* with the Geological Society of London there are still as many avenues open to different specialisms (engineering geology, contaminated land or hydrogeology to name a few).
With a never-ending array of new technologies and techniques, there’s always something new to learn (that’s the first lesson we teach our early career employees; you will never know everything in the geoscience industry!). One emerging new technology that we started looking at back in 2011 was Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP), which extract a small amount of heat from the geology and use it to heat your home or for hot water. Increased motivation to reduce carbon emissions the UK is seeing an increase in the use of low-carbon technologies like GSHP. Technology like this provides the perfect blend between lots of different geoscience disciplines; geology, hydrogeology, engineering geology and environmental science; it’s pretty much my idea of geoscience heaven!
As the world continues towards it’s goal of decarbonising and protecting our environmental assets more, geoscience consultants have a fundamental role to play in that mix. This will be helping to identify where certain resources might be most effective (for things like wind turbines and ground source heating), making sure that engineers have the information that they need to build new renewable technologies, and helping people to understand what needs to be done to make things safe. We also have a big part to play in helping to shape the politics of how we look after and manage our natural world in a more sustainable way and reduce our impact on the plant – that’s something called “geoethics”. A big part of what we do at Abbeydale BEC is restoring land from what’s been done to it by humans in the past 200 years.
Perhaps most importantly, after 14 years in the industry I still really enjoy what I do for a living, and am still really passionate about helping to look after our planet!
*NB: Accreditation as a Chartered Geologist or Chartered Scientist is something you can work towards after graduation, and is a sign to clients, regulators, employers and the general public that you are a competent professional who can demonstrate a high level of knowledge, skills and experience, and that you are bound by a strict code of professional conduct.
Encircled feature images from Unsplash; other images Rick’s own