Environmental Monitoring Training

Monitoring training can be carried out on your premises by our qualified and experienced staff.

There are two aspects to environmental monitoring training:

  • setting up a monitoring programme to ensure that relevant and representative information and/or samples are collected, and
  • training your staff to carry out the monitoring or sampling accurately.

If you do not have a monitoring programme in place, then we will work with you to design and implement a programme which meets the approval of the regulators (if required), and meets your information needs in a cost-effective way.

Where a new programme has been set up, or there is an existing monitoring programme, our trainer will first work through and understand the methodology and procedures themselves, to ensure that we understand the philosophy and purpose of the monitoring programme, and understand what is involved technically and physically.

This will enable us to devise a training programme that will ensure that:

  • the works will be carried out in the most practical and timely way feasible
  • monitoring will be carried out as safely as possible
  • the trainee will understand the purpose and reasoning behind the tasks, and therefore produce good quality data.

Training is a mix of classroom introduction and theory, followed by a hands-on practical, where the trainees carry out some or all of the monitoring programme themselves.  Carrying out the monitoring with our staff present helps your staff learn the correct procedures, and enables them to make mistakes and ask questions in a supportive environment.

All trainees receive a training pack containing all of the relevant information, and a certificate on successful completion of the course.

Our aim is to provide your staff with the background knowledge, experience, and confidence, so that they have the resources they need to carry out the monitoring to a standard acceptable to the Environment Agency.

Training courses currently available:

  • Taking representative groundwater samples. This course is designed to train your staff to take representative groundwater samples for laboratory analysis off-site or in your own laboratories (subject to EA approval).  This course can include a module on surface water monitoring (e.g. streams) if required.  Particularly useful for sites handling a lot of hazardous chemicals, especially where historic contamination is known or suspected.
  • Sniff testing / odour testing. This course trains your staff in sniff testing on and off-site to help monitor and record potentially offensive odours.  Useful for waste management sites, food industry sites generating biodegradable wastes such as slaughterhouses, etc.
  • Sniff testing / odour testing on incoming wastes. This course trains staff working at waste management sites such as transfer stations where domestic wastes are sorted into recyclables.  Staff are trained in basic sniff testing techniques, and wastes which are likely to generate unacceptable odours are discussed in detail.  This training aims to give staff the confidence to know which wastes can be accepted without causing odour problems, and which should be diverted to another site or to landfill.

We are also happy to consider developing other environmental monitoring training courses.

If you need help with Environmental Monitoring, contact Janet on 01422 24 22 22 or email email Janet.