CG: Hi there and welcome to the Natural Resources Wales podcast mini series on Flood Risk Management. My name’s Cerian Gingell and I work here at Natural Resources Wales. In this series you’ll hear from the different teams who work together to reduce the risk of flooding to communities in Wales. This will give you a really good overview of what flood risk is, what we are doing to manage it in Wales, and what impact the climate emergency is having on flood risk in Wales both now and in the future.
Hello! And welcome to episode 10 – the final episode of the Natural Resources Wales flood risk management mini-series. Today I’m joined by Richard Kelland who works as the lead for Skills and Development in Flood Risk Management for NRW. Welcome Rich, and thanks so much for joining us! To start off, could you tell us a little bit about you? Your background, education, and career to date?
RK – Hi Cerian, thanks for inviting me along today. Yeh my background of how I got into flood risk management… I think it is fair to say I have always had a bit of a passion for geography. I really enjoyed doing that in school and it’s never seemed to be too far away from at atlas when I was growing up and having a look at the maps and that sort of thing, where certain places were in the world and so yeh I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed travel shows like Michael Palin and that so…
CG: You’re showing your age there!
RK: (Laughing) Absolutely showing my age, so yeh loved that sort of thing. Taking geography in school seemed to be a natural progression so I studied geography at A’level with a couple of other subjects. A’levels didn’t exactly go to plan…
CG: Neither did mine!
RK: It happens sometimes, so the results didn’t go to plan, I didn’t get the points I needed to go to my chosen university so I had to go through clearing like a lot of people sort of going through the Sunday Times supplement seeing who would take us on really and I got a place at West London Institute to study geography there so I’d while away hours under the flight path watching the planes going into Heathrow.
CG: Yeh
RK: And studying geography there so it worked out really well. It was a great place, a great course and I got to meet some great friends so yeh I really enjoyed. And I guess the moral of the story perhaps for some of the listeners listening to it today if things don’t exactly work out in terms of the points you get for A’levels don’t panic, things sort of work out more often than not in the end
CG: Yeh they really do
RK: So yeh career-wise, in between my second and third years in university, I was looking for a summer job and I was going through the Wester Mail job adverts and I saw a temporary job as a data inputter at the NRA as it was back in the day, which was a predecessor of NRW, the National Rivers Authority, so I applied for it, had an interview and I started the following week. So yeh I started and it was a lot of, as the name suggests, a lot of data inputting into a very big computer as it was back then, putting in abstraction licenses, people who work and live alongside rivers had abstraction licenses and as part of the license condition, they had to send in returns every year and it was my job at the time to plug that information into the computer so… but it wasn’t always getting sort of being sat at the computer, I was allowed out with some of the other members of the water resources team going around some of the gauging stations and maintaining those which… there’s a really important job in flood risk management because these are the gauging stations which supply the hydrometric data that we can use to issue out flood warnings. It was a really interesting few months and I really enjoyed it. Then I had to go back to London to finish off my degree but I was really keen to sort of get back into it afterwards and I picked up the phone to my old boss to see if there was anything going at the time and yeh managed to get a temporary contract there again and it sort of moved on from there really. I’ve been working with NRW and its predecessors for nearly 30 years now and really enjoyed it.
RK: Started in flood risk management in 1996 and I have had various roles since then. Been an asset inspector where you go out into the field and check and making sure our asset stock, like our flood banks, are up to scratch at the operational end, sort of developing maintenance programmes. Another big part of my work all the way through my career is around incident response which perhaps you’ve picked through other podcasts…
CG: Yeh lots of our guests on the other episodes are part and parcel of the incident rotas as well so we did a little bit about it yeh…
RK: So I’m no different from the various roles on the incident response rotas and I’m currently a flood incident duty officer where I act as the link between our forecasters who monitor the river levels and our operational guys on the ground so typically closing gates when we have to so that’s a really important part of my career to date. But yeh it’s been a really interesting and varied career really
CG: Yeh!
RK: Really good career and had a lot of support along the way and great mentoring and support from senior colleagues. I was allowed to go away and study part time a HNC in civil engineering up at Treforest so yeh been supported all the way there which is what we are trying to do here really…
CG Yeh absolutely
RK: In my life outside of work I do a bit of sort of coaching and mentoring outside too, I’m a qualified cricket coach and rugby coach so I do a bit of coaching inside of work and outside of work…
CG: Living the dream init? (Laughs)
RK: Exactly! Which I really enjoy
CG: That was a really interesting and varied career path leading to where you are now heading up the skills and development in flood risk management. So what is that role? What does it cover? What does it entail?
RK: It’s a relatively new role, it was only created in 2020 in the sort of middle of the covid emergency if you like so it’s been quite strange from that point of view. It was put in place basically because we have got some really big challenges not only now but coming up in the future around climate change and the climate emergency
CG: Yeh
RK: Higher sea levels that we are going to have to deal with so it’s a case of making sure we’ve got the right people with the right skills at the right time going forward. That’s at the heart of the actual job itself. In terms of more detail about what we do, we develop technical training programmes for our staff so they get the technical training and skills that they need to do their jobs and that ranges from perhaps paying for people to go on day release courses doing HNCs in civil engineering and post grad courses to build on their sort of experiences and qualifications that they already have. But also sort of on more basic sort of training courses that run over a couple of days as well. But also it’s things like technical development framework so we get a bit of consistency and structure into people’s training so everyone has the same sort of training to do a particular task. A big part of the work at the moment is around development placements as well and developing the next group of flood risk management practitioners.
CG: Yeh
RK: That’s really important to us and it is relatively new that we are getting into this but to date we’ve had some really good people joining us from university on placements and we are looking to keep those guys and we start developing that sort of pipeline of talent over the sort of coming years. I also do a bit on professional development through an organisation called CIWEM which is the Chartered Institution Of Water and Environmental Management…
CG: (Laughing) That’s a bit of a mouthful!
RK: …Which is reduced down to CIWEM I’m the lead on professional development here so those that are interested in joining the organisation and having professional qualifications, we give advice to help them along the way and hopefully ending up with chartered members of the organisation which is seen as the gold standard so that’s another really rewarding part of my job as well.
CG: Lots of good stuff going on then, and lots of opportunities for the next generations of flood risk management practitioners. I guess with the climate and nature emergencies there’s a pressing need really to continue to develop passionate people into these roles. What challenges do you think there might be in the future? Or are there already challenges that you’re facing?
RK: I think there are already big challenges for us at the moment. I think the two main ones for us at the moment are around climate change within Wales over the last 12 months we’ve seen the highest temperature ever recorded…
CG: Yeh
RK:… in Wales over the summer last year and the drought quickly followed six months later by some of the highest river flows we’ve ever seen and the storms that sort of come with it…
CG: Yes it was sort of one extreme to the other didn’t it?
RK: One extreme to the other, you are absolutely right so we can’t exactly say that was down to climate change those particular events but I think they are going to be indicative of what’s to come really so it’s hugely important that we have the right numbers of people with the right skills to deal with that. But the other area that we have to deal with in the here and now is around recruitment and that’s been increasingly challenging for us, getting the right people to join us as flood risk management practitioners. I don’t think we are any different to many organisations at the moment who are struggling to find people, where it’s the aviation industry or dentists or the NHS, there’s lots of organisations who are struggling to find the right people. So I’d say those are the two of the biggest challenges we’ve got at the moment and it’s going to be increasingly important that we should sort of try and enthuse people at an early point in their career to think about flood risk management as a future career, hence why I think these podcasts are a really good idea. And to start generating that pipeline of talent so as people are coming to the end of their career and think about retirement that we have people coming in at the other end of that pipeline to develop their careers. So yeh, it’s about making those links with schools and universities is going to be really important not only in person but through the podcasts as well and also potentially sort of influencing course content as well so that if they’re doing engineering courses, geography, that flooding is increasingly going to be an important part of people’s curriculum so that as they take it forward through their studies. If we can influence that course content in schools and universities, we are certainly going to be look at doing that as well.
CG: Yeh definitely because I think a lot of people, young people especially perhaps, they are very passionate, they know about the environment, the climate emergency, the nature emergency but perhaps don’t know what opportunities there are to work in an industry that can perhaps address some of those challenges so hopefully these episodes will help to spark that interest.
RK: Absolutely.
CG: So, for anyone who is interested and they are listening today is thinking wow this sounds like a really interesting and worthwhile career for me, how do they get started? What sorts of education or experience helps set them apart?
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RK: Well the people who work in FRM come from a whole range of backgrounds really – we have lots of people from engineering backgrounds, scientists, obviously geographers and ecologists so there are a whole wide range of backgrounds that people come and join us from. How do they get started? Well listening to the podcast, picking up on the various things we do is really important and is going to be really useful but also these placement opportunities are really important as well. We have an annual intake of higher education placements that we have been running over the last couple of years which have taken off really well – getting a lot of interest and a lot of applications for them. So if you are looking to get qualified at sort of HNC level and above and going onto a degree course, those are the particular areas that we are looking for at the moment. So we are looking to get people in and run it like a doctors’ rotation, you know once you go into a hospital and a doctor would go into lots of different departments and getting experience in different areas, that’s the sort of thing that we are looking to develop through the placements. So you’d spend a few months in a particular part of FRM work so it helps you understand the wider business if you like and how it’s all linked together. And also get an idea of what you enjoy doing as well and what you might want to do in the future so we are looking to approach it from that point of view. But we are also looking to expand the placement opportunities that we are offering as well so looking at perhaps short term work experience – spend some time with us for a week when you are doing your GCSEs and also longer term apprenticeships as well because perhaps university isn’t for everyone but I think there’s a place for everyone in the team, to have a role in the flood risk management team.
CG: Yep definitely. So we’ve got a few different routes there into FRM and I suppose wider than that, NRW by the sounds of it. How do people find out about opportunities to join the team whether that’s as work experience or on a placement or joining us as an apprentice or permanent member of staff?
RK: As I mentioned we are looking to expand our placement opportunities into areas like apprenticeships and work experience. I can’t say they are the most up to date on social media but yeh, all over social media channels in NRW so particularly on Facebook and the likes of that where we’ve been running campaigns with that over the last few months to let people know what our opportunities that we’ve got so keep an eye on that. We’ve also got a dedicated placements page on the NRW website which people can find if you put that into the search engine on the NRW website you’ll find what placement opportunities we have not only with FRM but with the wider business as well so that’s a really good starting point. But also like a lot of other companies as well, have a look at the jobs board on the company website as well and see what opportunities you might like to go for in the future really.
CG: Brilliant! And I think we’ll probably put links to all these webpages in the show notes so people can access it from the podcast directly as well. So lots of ways there for people to keep in touch and keep up to date. And a lot of interesting information I think, it’s nice to hear a little bit, something a bit different in the flood risk management world – the rest of the episodes have been quite technical in nature, this one has been a bit…
RK: Yes quite wide ranging, I suppose it covers everything
CG:It does! I think before we finish off, it’d be really good if I could ask you one more question and that’s what’s your favourite thing about the work you do in FRM? What do you find most rewarding?
RK: Oh wow… that is a tough question… I guess, although it is a relatively big part of the business really, we run around 400, 450 people, it’s still feels like a sort of close knit community if you like, particularly around sort of when we have flood events and we are perhaps under the kosh, that’s when those sort of those close knittedness comes together and you sort of value your colleagues and that sort of team working element really comes through so it really is sort of a close knit department. There’s also the difference we make around for the people of Wales and the environment and the economy and making a real difference there and getting a lot of reward from that but generally around placements and developing people either through CIWEM or through the placement opportunities and providing sort of mentoring on a personal level I get a really big kick out of that. I really enjoy it in work and outside so I feel quite lucky from that point of view as a career I do something I really enjoy too.
CG: Which makes it less of a job and more like, you know, something that’s nice to do.
RK: Absolutely yeh it’s what do they say, if you’re doing something you love and get paid for it, it’s not so much of a job then is it
CG: Exactly! Thank you Rich for giving up your time to talk to me today. It’s been really interesting to hear all about the work that you do to help ensure that not only do today’s FRM staff have the opportunities to continue to grow and develop their careers, but also the work that goes into developing future generations of flood risk management practitioners as well.
RK: No problem
CG: I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. If you have any comments or questions, you can contact us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or by the email address you can find in the show notes. You’ll also find links to our flood risk management pages where you can view some of the things that we talked about here today. Thanks for listening.
