Hannah’s career journey
Hannah is regional delivery director for flood, coast and maritime and manager of our Birmingham office. She is also vice president of CIWEM and chair of the RSK Women’s Employee Network. We catch up with Hannah as she celebrates 20 years working in the flood and coastal sector and shares her key takeaways from the last two decades.
How did your career begin?
Twenty years ago, I started my first role in the flood and coastal industry, working at the Environment Agency in my home town of Shrewsbury. The time has flown by and those years have been interesting and varied, with challenges and opportunities evolving over time.
I have seized many opportunities and now I’m keen to enable and help the next generation of flood and coastal professionals to grow and develop in my wake.
What changes have you seen through your career?
The only constant is change! In the aftermath of the major flooding of 2007 (which happened while I was on maternity leave), I felt a little disorientated by the pace of change in the industry. The Pitt Review into the 2007 flooding was coming out and it felt like, having spent five years getting up to speed with the way the industry works, it was all change! Then someone said to me in a meeting, “the only constant is change,” which enabled me to step back from it and observe.
There are many examples, and these are but a few:
In 2003, in many areas, the only flooding mapping we had in many places was presented as 50 m blocks…who else remembers the Institute of Hydrology Indicative Flood Map? In 2023, we have comprehensive mapping of flood risk from all sources, increasingly embedded with receptor information to inform strategic planning, as well as incident response, during times of flood.
In 2003, the Environment Agency had a flood defence department and we conducted feasibility studies to determine if a scheme could be afforded or not from annual government budgets, which often went down after a few drier years. Most of the schemes delivered were major engineering schemes on larger rivers and on the coast.
In 2023, we have a long-term six-year settlement of £5.2 billion to reduce flooding risk to 336,000 properties by 2027. This is being implemented by a variety of different risk management authorities, including the Environment Agency and also Lead Local Flood Authorities, which now play a key role in managing the risk of flooding from surface water, groundwater and smaller watercourses. Partnership funding encourages risk management authorities to develop schemes with multiple outcomes: a reduction in flood risk or coastal erosion, but also a wider contribution to placemaking, including environmental and amenity benefits. Schemes range from smaller property flood resilience projects, river restoration and natural flood management to major coastal and fluvial schemes, such as the £160 million Southsea Coastal Scheme and the £640 million Lower River Thames Scheme.
Supporting councils to manage surface water flooding
Putting her practical knowledge from managing the Lead Local Flood Authority function within local government into practice, Hannah is currently supporting a number of Councils to develop projects that will help to manage surface water flooding. This includes Surface Water Management Plans and flood modelling studies in areas recently affected by flooding, seeking to deliver pragmatic and realistic solutions and providing the evidence to secure funding from a range of different funding sources. These studies can be used to inform Section 19 Flood Investigations into recent flooding and the development of capital programmes of work. Hannah also supports LLFAs to implement new approaches to their responsibilities and is developing exciting and efficient ways to approach programme development and asset management, as well as supporting clients to look ahead to the implementation of SUDS Approving Bodies in 2024.
Tell us about your participation in the sector
I’ve been volunteering for CIWEM for 18 years, since I put my hand up to organise the Rivers and Coastal group study weekend in Telford, held in spring 2006. I’ve established a network across the industry, developed wider skills such as event planning and public speaking and CIWEM has helped keep me up to date with developments in the flood and coastal sector and wider environmental management arena. So far, I’ve supported around 20 people to achieve chartered status and I’m always incredibly proud of them when I look at their journeys to success and reflect that I’ve played a small part in that.
I’m also a founding member of the Women in Flood and Coastal Erosion (WiFCERM) initiative – we are a networking group of professionals, set up to support and connect women working across the sector. I’ve organised, presented and chaired at networking events and acted as a mentor for the last two years. More recently, I’ve established the Women’s Employee Network across the RSK Group, supported by a great team of people who I am keen to support to develop and grow into their committee roles.
The great feedback we hear from CIWEM, WiFCERM and from members of the employee network is a fantastic reward for the hours put into my extracurricular roles like this. Helping others to grow and develop can be as rewarding, if not more so, than your own development.
What is your advice for those building their careers?
Embrace opportunities in a way that’s sustainable for your wellbeing. We can think of our wellbeing like a bucket. Pour water into that bucket from various different glasses – let’s call them paid work, voluntary work, home, family, hobbies, etc. – and at some point, the bucket is full. I’ve learned that the time to say no is before my bucket overflows and that I also need to prioritise any remaining headroom in the bucket for the things that are most important to me.
Learning to say no to opportunities can be a challenge for me because I see opportunity and a chance to contribute to the bigger picture everywhere. However, looking after our wellbeing and creating more capacity in our buckets is more beneficial for us all in the long term.
What motivates you?
I’ve worked with community groups and have been on-site less than a day after devastating flooding. I’ve been invited into people’s houses to see the destruction the water has caused and heard first-hand stories of the impact it has had on themselves and their families. I stood at the top of a street in Nottinghamshire ten years ago after severe summer flooding in July 2013. There were personal belongings piled in the street and the eerie sound of dehumidifiers whirred in the background. It was heartbreaking and moments like this bring into focus the ‘why’ of what we do in the sector.
People should be at the centre of what we do and it can be easy to get distracted, wrapping ourselves up in industry jargon and acronyms and applying industry guidance without consideration of the bigger picture. The importance of listening to enable you to work in partnership with a community to develop pragmatic and feasible solutions to flooding cannot be overstated.
So my final takeaway from the 20 years and my challenge to myself and everyone reading this is this: