My route to CIWEM Chartership

Binnies regional delivery director Hannah Coogan FCIWEM C.WEM shares with us her route to becoming a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager and Fellow

I’m a Regional Delivery Director with Binnies UK (part of the RSK Group) for our Flood, Coastal and Maritime business. My teams are primarily based in Birmingham and Glasgow and are supplemented by a national network of Flood and Coastal Consultants.

My specialist areas are flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) and stakeholder engagement. Equality diversity and inclusion matter greatly to me and I am a founding member of the Women in FCERM initiative and the Chair of the RSK Women’s Network.

Over my 20-year career to date, I’ve been involved in a wide range of activities, from supporting communities on the ground affected by flooding to leading strategic and long-term adaptation strategies for flooding and coastal change. Every day at work is interesting, but also incredibly important because the work we do ultimately supports communities to adapt to climate change.

The application

Becoming a Chartered Water and Environmental Manager (C.WEM) felt like a badge not only necessary for career progression, but also one I feel incredibly proud to wear as the work of CIWEM is very important to me. I have volunteered for CIWEM since 2005 and participated in various committees, including the Rivers and Coastal Group (which I chaired between 2013-14) and the West Midlands Branch (which I chaired between 2018-2021). I am currently a CIWEM Board Trustee and President Elect.

I have a Geography degree from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and decided to apply for CIWEM Chartership in 2008, five years after I graduated. By this stage in my career I’d been involved in a wide range of projects and felt I could demonstrate with sound evidence that I could meet all of the CIWEM competencies. My employer at the time (JBA Consulting) was supportive and encouraging, helping me prepare for the professional review.

If I could do anything differently, I think I’d believe in myself more. I was very nervous ahead of the professional review interview and actually it felt more like an informal chat, where the interviewers clearly wanted me to succeed.

I had a fantastic manager at the time who told me: “We think you’re great Hannah, but this is external verification that you are great too”. I think this is good advice that I now pass on to other people I mentor through Chartership.

Applying for Chartership is your chance to shine, to showcase your career to date and to show people how passionate you are about making our water and wider environment a better place for everyone. So go for it.

Becoming a Fellow

When I was eleven years into my career I secured the role of Flood Risk Manager at Staffordshire County Council, which was my first senior management role. I grew the team to provide services to nearby Councils and I began to think I was probably at the point I should consider becoming a CIWEM Fellow.

On reflection, my biggest advice here (again) is to believe in yourself as it took me a few years to apply, which I did in 2019 (16 years into my career) with encouragement from colleagues and CIWEM HQ.

At that point I was working back in Consultancy and able to demonstrate both public and private sector senior leadership experience. I didn’t realise how few women had become Fellows and it has become apparent that seeing me succeed has encouraged others to apply and that is what I am most proud of.

My top tips for a successful application

• Have a chat early on with a CIWEM mentor and watch the online videos on the CIWEM YouTube channel from the Metropolitan and West Midlands Branches on the competences to help you get a good overall understanding of them. Don’t leave this until you decide to formally apply.

• Keep a record of the things that you work on and map these to CIWEM competences over time. For example, a log that you update every 2-3 months could be helpful.

• Ask colleagues (or contacts in other organisations doing a similar role) to share their competences for examples to help you understand how you can map the types of work you do against the competences.

• Remember it is your responsibility to lead the process and not your organisations or your mentors. Set up regular catch up meetings or calls and develop a programme, working back from your target submission date and encompassing all elements of the submission to avoid any last minute requests for signatures and supporting letters, replacements for missing degree certificates etc.

• Believe in yourself! By the time you will have submitted you will have two sponsors who agree that your submission meets CIWEMs requirements. Even if you are not successful at gaining a Professional Review Interview or at the Interview, you will get good detailed feedback to work on. Think of it like a driving test, not everyone passes first time (I didn’t!) but if you don’t you know what you need to work on for the next time and by that point you can drive well enough to have been put forward for the test in the first place.

What’s next

I’m looking forward to becoming the President of CIWEM in late 2024. Increasing the understanding of environmental issues and finding solutions to address them has been important to me since childhood. This is an excellent opportunity to advocate for what I believe in and spread the urgency at which we need to act to address our climate and ecological emergency.

Want to become a Chartered member or Fellow? Find out more here.