Anna Prescott

"Personality types: Developer, Explorer and Quality Controlled.Developer: As part of my job, I am supporting the construction industry and improving the environment around us, which I enjoy. I love learning new things and solving problems as part of my job.Explorer: I am practical and enjoy problem solving for our clients. I am pretty competitive and work well on my own, although enjoy supporting a team.Quality Controller: I am trustworthy and proactive, often challenging the ways things are done and looking for more efficient processes."

"As a ground engineer / engineering geologist, I work for a consultancy that supports a range of construction projects across the UK. I have worked on a wide range of projects. For example, I have supported small basement developments in London. This has involved visiting the site to supervise the drilling of boreholes and log the soils and following this up with writing a detailed report on the findings and analysing laboratory results back in the office. Another big project I have worked on is supporting the construction of a new overhead power line in Scotland, in order to bring energy from off-shore wind farms into the mainland. This project involved consecutive weeks on site in Scotland, supervising drilling boreholes and logging to rock core. I then followed this up with analysis of laboratory test data and writing a detailed interpretative report to our client summarising our findings. I work as both a geotechnical and geoenvironmental consultancy, so our work aims to support our clients with designing foundations as well as remediating contaminated land.I particularly enjoy the variety of work I get to participate in, from small projects to large ones, as well as seeing the impact of my work on construction in London and the UK. I like the fact that many of the projects I work on are doing something positive for the environment.The typical starting salary is between £25-30k."

"At college I took science and maths subjects, as these are what I enjoyed the most. I did not know what I wanted to do at university - I really enjoyed A-level chemistry but liked the sound of Earth Sciences /Geology. As a result, I took Natural Sciences, which allowed me to put-off making a decision! Throughout my four years at university, I slowly specialised in the subject I enjoyed the most - Earth Sciences. While in my third year at university, I completed a research internship which confirmed to me that I did not want to stay in academia. I decided I wanted to go into industry, but I was not sure what. After a lot of research, I learnt about geotechnical engineering and applied to jobs within that sector. I was lucky to get offered a job with CGL, and am loving it having been here for 4 years now!"

"I am a very keen sailor! I spend my weekends sailing, and I make sure work does not interfere with that!"

"My work days are extremely varied, which is why I love my job so much. I am on site around 50% of the time. A typical site day starts early as I usually have to be on site for 8am. I meet with our subcontractors, complete site inductions (explain the aim of the day and point out key health and safety issues) and then I supervise the works. This involves me checking that the site team are completing the drilling correctly, and I log /record all the soils /rock that come out of the ground. I collect samples and organise these to be picked up by a laboratory for further testing. I must have good communication skills and problem solving skills in order to ensure everything goes smoothly. I typically finish on site around 16:30 so I can get home in good time (or back to a hotel if the site is >1hr from home). I may be on site for a few days or up to a couple of weeks (going home for the weekend though!) if it is a bigger project.An office day usually starts at 9am, although my company allow flexible working hours as well as working from home. I will start the day checking my emails and replying to colleagues and clients. If I was on site the day before, I will have to write up the information I took and email the laboratory with testing instructions. Our final 'product' to our clients is the report we produce outlining the findings of the site works and recommendations we suggest, typically about foundation design and contaminated land, so I spend quite a bit of time writing reports. Although I thought this might be boring when I first started work, I really enjoy summarising all our findings and learning about the wide range of construction projects we support.Other office work I often get involved in includes writing proposals to potential clients for further work, as well as emailing and calling contractors to organise site works."

"AS-Level:- PhysicsA-Levels:MathsFurther MathsChemistryBiologyUndergraduate:Natural Sciences, specialising in Earth Sciences (BA)Masters:Earth Sciences (MSci)"