Environmental health and safety jobs

Air quality and environmental health and safety jobs appear and reappear rather mysteriously, or so it seems. Easy come, easy go? Maybe, but hopefully not.  When the demand for environmental expertise or research & development services is high, the right people to do the work can seem impossible to find.  It's at times like these when our health-safety and environmental departments and consulting firms become eager to let you know they need new people in their workforce.

Rod of Health (Asclepius)

Where is a good place to look for employment? Are you looking at environmental health and safety jobs or perhaps a job in meteorology, soil or water science, or geotechnical and/or environmental engineering?  Then you would probably start with government agencies, environmental engineering firms or any other appealing opportunities you might find when visiting any consultancy job recruitment drives that catch your attention.

You might want to find environmental regulatory and compliance opportunities, waste management jobs or other environmental health and safety jobs. Or even weather jobs.  If that is the case, good places to check include monster.com, workopolis.com or indeed.com.  See examples of the current opportunities in the vertical columns below on the right-hand side of this page.

Looking for environmental health and safety jobs in Alberta?

What about the United States?  Maybe you have credentials and a solid ongoing interest in meteorology and perhaps you need to know where to start.  In that case, check with  Environment Canada, your provincial environmental department or special agencies like the Oil and Gas Commission (OGC in BC) or the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) in Alberta if you like working in a regulatory environment.  Or equivalent organizations in other geographical regions.  It could be just the thing for you.

The list of things environmental professionals do and projects they carry out include:

• apply for and obtain regulatory permitting,
• conduct reporting,
• ensure compliance with prevailing regulations,
• complete emission inventories,
• use dispersion data modelling software,
• determine environmental human impact assessments
• on-site training

and other scientific and technical activities for client personnel.

Is it easy to get consulting jobs?  An informal rule around many companies is, "we're not hiring, but we're always hiring" kind of thing. That is if your skill set and presentation are seen as extremely appropriate for one of our environmental health and safety jobs you will be deemed valuable regardless of whether the company is currently running a campaign to add people or not.  It's even better if you have relationships with industrial clients already in place.

With many environmental consulting firms, a physics, chemistry, or meteorology degree or one of many different environmental engineering degrees is required even for entry-level scientific positions, with special consideration given for graduate work completed, interdisciplinary work, established networks of contacts and related air quality modeling experience.

Pay particular attention to your marketing and organizational skills: they are strong assets which will get you far in most of these environmental consulting jobs.  Are you good at writing proposals and cost estimates?

If you are interested in working in Calgary in one of our air quality and environmental health and safety jobs and, more importantly, if you have numerous strong connections with clients and find yourself in need of the technical and administrative support or scientific guidance, call us.

What if you have some experience and a client base already? What if you need to partner with a group that will provide support to develop and grow these relationships and complete the work?  Please send Ann Jamieson an email. This firm is called Calvin Consulting Group Ltd., CCGL, and she can be reached by using info @ calvinconsulting.ca (remove spaces).

Other things to explore?

I have made career changes in the past and a special tool which helped me greatly was What Color is Your Parachute, by Richard Bolles and Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.  They both provide very strong insight into yourself your desires, skills and your own career aspirations. Check online for websites offering Myers Briggs (MBTI) or big five testing

Environmental health and safety jobs usually require you to complete your degree. If that is not really your thing, but you're smart and on the ball, maybe you should investigate various technical support positions in the environmental sector or transportation services such as air traffic control.

Background information for various environmental services offered.

In the past, we have had great clients in the areas of manufacturing of chemicals and forestry products, mining, even some in the transportation industry, and the majority for Calvin Consulting have been oil and gas producers.

The services offered include Phase I and Phase II environmental site audits including soil services as well as risk assessments, many services in environmental management and Environmental Compliance along with regulatory applications.  Some of our projects have included stormwater control as well.

One company we partnered with in the past offered soil purification services using Thermal Phase Separation technology - something they took pride in because it was a little different.

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