CAREER CHOICES FOR GEOSCIENCE STUDENTS IN A LARGE CONSULTING COMPANY

The perspectives in this presentation are based on my experience as an employee of ARCADIS, an international environmental consulting company, based in the Netherlands, and with over 6,300 employees in the United States. ARCADIS is organized on the basis of four corporate pillars: (1) Health & Safety; (2) Operations; (3) Client Development; and, (4) Technical Knowledge and Innovation, or TKI. Health and safety is a paramount element of our work, not only for employees but also for our clients. The operations pillar involves the tasks needed to take a given project from start to finish. Client development focuses on building personal relationships with the businessmen and women who hire ARCADIS to solve their problems. The TKI pillar is how ARCADIS conducts its research and development of new technologies used to remediate contaminated air, sediment, soil and groundwater. The TKI pillar embraces the applied research experienced by many geoscience students during undergraduate and graduate research.

ARCADIS employs geoscientists from the entry level to those with decades of experience. Early career employees are not expected to immediately select a career path, and have the opportunity to participate in each, depending on their interests. Many employees find a home in the operations pillar while at the same time becoming embedded experts in a particular technical field, or developing strong professional relationships with a core group of clients.

I will illustrate how the four pillars are incorporated into a long-term project to remediate a source of chlorinated solvents in glaciolacustrine deposits at a former aircraft engine manufacturer. The source area included trichloroethene as dense, non-aqueous phase liquid (DNAPL) in the area of former loading rack at a railroad siding. ARCADIS’ work required constant negotiation with the property owner, the owner’s technical representative, state regulators, and the insurance company whose policy paid for the work. The insurer’s review team included an internal technical reviewer, a financial analyst, and a third-party consultant. Technical and financial negotiations were exhaustive, requiring patience and constant re-assessment of technical strategy.