Graduate Environmental Sustainability Advisor Review

I have had a very positive experience so far at Balfour Beatty. I have been offered lots of support from both my immediate team and wider teams. I have had the opportunity to work both on-site on a project and in an office based environment. I have engaged with the early careers programme with has been very fufilling and has created many opportunities for me.

The on site role as an environmental advisor involves site inspections and audits, ensuring environmental compliance. I have been involved with drafting and approving ecological permits, applying for ordinary watercourse consents and holding the site works lookahead meetings. I enjoy being out on site, problem solving on the ground to create practical environmentally positive solutions. Working alongside the wider environment and ecology team has hugely benefitted my development, coupled with working alongside operations teams, design, health and safety this has given me the chance to explore some of the other functions within a project and understand how all the moving parts work.
Outside of my site based role, I also spent some time in the main office, carrying out a more desk based role. From this I learnt how centrally data is managed from a sustainability point of view. I conducted various sustainability portal led projects to analyse and assess critical gaps in these data sets, to improve the functionality of data collection and how project teams can be supported when collating this data.

My role within the environment is a hugely fufilling role. I have had the chance to implement solutions on the ground to protect our natural environment. Each member of the team has a specific interest and focus within the environmental sustainability strategy. I feel highly valued by my team who go above and beyond to support and help me development into the role.

The company car is a good benefit due to the number of miles I drive weekly.
Various other benefits include all the opportunities you get to travel up to various projects and sites I see that as a perk.

So far I feel well prepared and well equipped with skills to help me develop in this sector. Whilst I continue to complete the graduate scheme I will look to shadow some members of staff outside my project to explore other areas of sustainability.

My line manager is highly supportive and require schedules one to ones to ensure I am feeling that support. I have 2 mentors that have guided me in my first year working for BB and they have given me a variety of insights into what to ask for from a development point of view.

Living away on a project can often feel isolating a lonely, especially if you have moved far away from your support network. Travelling at night can be difficult. Understanding how to balance that is hard but having open conversations with line managers can ease some of the stress that it brings.

In the main office the culture was very strong, atmopshere was positive and people were polite.
In the project office culture is also strong, but less formal. The Right to Respect campaign is a good campaign established by BB that encourages anyone to speak out and feel supported.
Working from home policy on the project changes regularly, but most of the time if you require WFH we can request it and line manager will approve.

The Right to Respect initiatives is a particularly strong campaign. It is rolled out in the form of an online or in person course, whilst I feel we could make this a regular session i think the way it is evolving now it is a really strong campaign.

Yes

BB offers a wide range of opportunities if you are early in your career. From the EC programme, to other internal function based programmes the company has a lot to offer to help inform those first few years of your career. Some of the benefits such as company car are a really nice plus. Also the scale of projects that BB has on its portfolio ensure you will have some great experiences on projects if that is what you want.

During recruitment I didn't know that I would be moving away to be on a project. Although I was happy to do so, it was a shock to me at first as it wasn't highlighted in the description.