Digital Book of Landscapes 2022

EARLY YEARS MENTORING

Chaired by Nicola Hamill

This Workshop looked at how we can best support our early years into professional chartership and then to senior grade.

The National Team

  • We need a Landscape Channel to allow staff the ask questions as a whole group
  • We will expand the existing Wednesday group to make mentoring a national activity
  • Set up a series of objectives or terms of reference for the sessions
  • Remote working is a challenge, we need to try and find ways to address this

Talks

  • More invited mentor talks from the senior team to garner their vast experience
  • Find some external speakers (possibly from wider Atkins Business)
  • Hot topics, ask the Atkins champions to talk about topics eg Clare Wansbury re BNG
  • Plug the gaps for topics that need more help (sections 2 & 4 of the P2C syllabus)
  • Find Atkins online courses of relevance and create a list as a resource

Peer Support

  • Set up a graduate group (via this P2C group perhaps?)
  • Collect knowledge and materials/ shadow projects and collect into an organised resource
  • Create a ‘Guide to the Early Years’ of Landscape Architecture

F2F meetings/activities

  • Have a National get together
  • Construction site reviews – organise regionally to get site experience first hand (eg Broad Street, Oxford with Adam Starkey/David Fearon)
  • Plant and nursery visits
  • Project sites revisited eg London sites with experts such as Peter Heath, Finberry to visit completed sites and examine details on site.

Post P2C what’s next

  • The rewards and Learning Contract – are we all signed up?
  • Repeat Simon Ward’s talks annually re the next steps beyond P2C
  • Soft skills training for behaviours, processes, next PDR steps, create a road map which relates to the Job descriptions to facilitate progression and ensure staff retention (with atkins Training)
  • Find mentors outside our discipline