Members' professional development

BHS has always tried to support its members in their professional development, and the committee has worked in consultation with the membership to take stock of how they can best achieve Chartered status, as a means of potentially advancing their careers.

Following the positive response to our questionnaire on Chartered status, a successful meeting on the subject in 2006 and considerable efforts by immediate past President Rod Hawnt, a working group was established to advance the issue during 2007 and 2008.

This working group was made up of:
• key BHS committee members,
• representatives of two of the main awarding bodies: the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM),
• a number of representatives of key employers: Environment Agency, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Atkins and Halcrow, and
• two representative universities: Imperial College and the University of Lancaster.

The working group established that unfortunately the Privy Council have indicated that there is little or no scope for a new Chartered Hydrologist status. However, members can seek to achieve one or more of the existing CEng, CEnv, CSci or MCIWEM qualifications, or alternatively CMet, CGeog or CIWO (details of these acronyms are given in the Guide document).

The working group have developed a draft Guide to Professional Development and Professional Qualification for Hydrologists, which was launched during the National Symposium at Exeter in September 2008. This guide attempts to explain the possible Chartered status routes available to hydrologists and sets out (through the text and a decision tree) how a hydrologist might choose the most appropriate Chartered qualification and awarding body.

The guide contains a series of Appendices listing the specific competencies required for each Chartered qualification and giving examples of hydrological experience that can demonstrate achievement of each of these competencies. Because the guide is currently in draft form, it is hoped that these examples will be expanded and refined over the coming year, and the President would welcome feedback from members on this issue.

Hydrological issues

BHS encourages members to use the society as a means of engaging with issues of contemporary hydrological interest.

The holding of international, national and regional meetings and the writing of newsletter articles provide well established means of achieving this aim, but two more deserve particular mention:

• Consultations: government departments, agencies and others organise consultation exercises from time to time. Members are encouraged to contact the Honorary Secretary if they are aware of consultations for which they feel a hydrology-focused response from the Society may be relevant and to which they may wish to contribute. Responses inevitably require a considerable input of members’ time, but have been used to provide a clear hydrological voice on relevant issues.

  Recent consultations and the BHS submissions

• Electronic discussion forum (BHS Mailbase) – this exists to facilitate rapid exchange of information among BHS members and other hydrologists. The list is used for a variety of purposes: The mailbase offers you the chance to post your hydrological questions, news or opportunities to other list members, to announce details of meetings and to engage in discussion on issues of immediate hydrological interest. Messages can be sent to the list only by list members, who are asked to keep any attachments to within 200kb, out of consideration for members using dial-up modem internet access, and not to use the Mailbase for advertising or non-hydrological messages.
  
  To join the BHS Mailbase, send an email to
  LISTSERV@jiscmail.ac.uk - leave the subject blank and in the message write
  
  subscribe BHS-HYDROLOGY FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
  
  replacing "FIRSTNAME" and "LASTNAME" with your own names.
  
  If you have any difficulty, please contact the list manager, Joe Pearce.
  
  An archive of past correspondence on the list can be found at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/bhs-hydrology.html.

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