We love to gather stories from in the field with our team. And this particular one is relating to safety. It’s a priority and focus, always at E2M. One of our key values is ‘Flock’ which highlights the criticality of our E2M team returning safely to our nest. We asked Harry to share his experience of safety at E2M, and his most challenging project execution yet. This is his story.
Background
Harry has been working as an ecologist for 4 years, 2 of which have been spent at E2M. Growing up on a farm, he’s had a long-standing interest in the outdoors with a particular focus on fauna. He’s also been a critical contributor and team member on one of our most remote projects.
So, if you think we disappear off to comfortable camps with air conditioning and black out curtains you’d be mistaken.
The project
We were commissioned to undertake ecological surveys and offset investigations to offset the development of a Wind Farm for our client. The project demanded numerous site visits to capture the insights needed to provide comprehensive results. For Harry, this meant a 7 day survey for rapid assessment of MNES species with another ecologist and a second 11 day trip for a team of 3 ecologists to undertake more detailed investigations of fauna occurrence and habitat values.
Technology enabled
Desktop evaluations were undertaken to identify potential survey and habitat quality sites, including the review of habitat mapping for target species, ground truthed regional ecosystem (RE) mapping, remote sensing, topographies, satellite imagery, and records of target species in proximity to the primary offset investigation area. Knowing the landscape enabled us to identify, understand, articulate and mitigate safety risks, and create a safety focused project plan.
Our approach
This was one of our most challenging site visits to date, as the team needed to review a remote offsets site. To do this safely, we hired camper trailers for the duration of the surveys. The camping spot was on a cattle property, 2.5 hours from the actual offsets site – which still halved our driving time to the alternative accommodation options. As you can imagine monitoring and managing fatigue through night shifts and split shifts was always paramount. Especially when driving to and from site. E2M conducted a thorough risk assessment prior to conducting these surveys, which considered the risks of using camper trailers against the risks of additional driving, how to manage fatigue effectively – and how to ensure the field team had access to delicious meals!
No mobile service was available and planning had to be diligent, ensuring all equipment had been checked, the Satellite phone had been credited and our location devices were clearly receiving reception.
We also had to ensure that rest periods were adequate and adjustable according to team fatigue and wellbeing.
Team + Trust + Transparency = Safety
Our safety standards are non-negotiable at E2M. I quickly learned the need to focus on:
Team – understanding each other’s needs and issues to inform your own decisions and actions.
Trust – evaluating the safety of equipment and ensuring we live and breathe our duty of care.
Transparency – knowing the importance of speaking up in driving better safety outcomes.
And as a team, safety means sharing the things that went well, could have gone better, and didn’t go well at all. We learn better together.
