Senior Consultant – Environmental and Ecological Assessment in Bristol

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world. Ricardo, a member of WSP, is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

We are currently looking for a Senior Consultant to join our Water Practice which has a strong project portfolio in providing technical support on a variety of water management and ecology projects, across a wide range of clients in the water, developer and public sectors.

Key Responsibilities

• Your role will involve working closely with project management to ensure implementation of ecological assessments, through the coordination of associated surveys, consultation with third parties and regulators and identification of mitigation in support of our client proposals and operations.
• You will be involved in team leadership, managing the technical work of more junior staff and sub-consultants and (depending on experience) managing projects and their direction too.
• The nature of the role and the dynamic of the team provides a wealth of opportunities to explore your interests and carry out a range of tasks and functions within aquatic ecology, as well as a range of related disciplines.
• There is also a degree of flexibility over which facets of the role you become most invested in: be it a more technical focus; project management; developing bids and tenders; or a more generalist role.

Key Competencies and Experience

• In depth knowledge of UK and EU Wildlife Legislation, planning policies, licensing requirements and best practice survey techniques.
• Capable of undertaking Ecological Impact Assessments and contributing to Habitats Regulations Assessments.
• A good understanding of WFD assessments, in particular the biological metrics and indices that inform ecological status.
• Leading, planning and co-ordinating field surveys, analysing and interpreting survey results and planning and co-ordinating ecological mitigation works.
• Demonstrable specialist knowledge in either fisheries, macroinvertebrate or macrophyte ecology preferable.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; be able to produce meticulous and accurate technical reports as well as communicate confidently with a variety of clients and stakeholders.
• Be organised with proven ability to multi-task and handle several projects simultaneously.

Skills and Behaviours

• A self-starter, as you’ll be part of a small, busy team. Excellent team working skills are therefore essential together with strong communication skills, sound understanding of ecological impact assessment and a close attention to detail.
• Whilst fieldwork skills are needed for this role, there will be a large component of office-based coordination, data analysis, client contact and report writing.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place. We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on. Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We’re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health. Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we’ll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and to ensure an inclusive culture, we are recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Next steps

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date. Ricardo is a Disability confident employer please advise the recruitment team via recruit@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.