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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:
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