What made you choose Arbtech?
I found Arbtech when looking for consultancies while doing my master’s degree.
I liked the wording of the information across their staff pages, as it conveyed a sense of breaking the mould, and from that, I just got this hunch that I’d like to work for them.
Then, it just so happened that my inward route magically appeared via an ecological key skills course that they used to run, and that ended up being the beginning of my story at Arbtech.
What do you love most about the company?
Freedom to plan my life and my day and be myself.
I don’t enjoy being told what to do and will quickly leave a job if I feel micromanaged or like the company is restricting my life choices.
At Arbtech, things are run under an ethos of trust, and I can basically do what the hell I like as long as my billing targets are met and my clients are happy; having that trust and freedom in turn drives me to do a good job.
I also love the people. Rob has a knack for bringing together awesome people, and he’s managed to cultivate not just a team, but a community of people who all get on.
As such, our staff socials are absolutely amazing experiences! Recently, during some difficult times, I’ve found a huge amount of both practical and emotional support from Rob and my other colleagues, and it is amazing to feel like a company really has your back.
What do you do when you are not at Arbtech?
I’m big into my music.
I’m the lead singer in a progressive folk rock band called Spriggan Mist, and I’m also a singer/songwriter in my own right.
I play the guitar, bouzouki, mandolin and recorder, and away from music, I’m also a fine artist.
Aside from my creative things, I enjoy hiking, camping, and doing mysterious pagan things at stone circles.
What is your biggest tip to achieve the most in life?
Make a vision, work out the steps to achieve it (make it baby steps – don’t make them too big) and keep chipping away at those steps relentlessly. It doesn’t matter how slow you go or if you fall back as long as you keep on moving.
Those steps can be a whole bunch of things; they can involve overcoming and achieving both practical and emotional things (for me getting out of a big life rut involved a lot of practical things, but achieving those practical things involved a lot of inside work).
With every tiny thing you successfully achieve, you gain more and more confidence in yourself until suddenly, you find that you have accrued this big pile of achievements and confidence, and the ability to achieve more than you ever thought you could.
What is the best social you’ve been on at Arbtech?
Experience-wise, Austria for the amazing experiences of snow sports and explorations of nature in the Alps.
I also loved Norfolk, which involved hot tubs and seeing marsh harriers while kayaking through the broads – it was an awesome bonding experience.
And of course, the weekend of insanity that was the Isle of Wight Festival!
Where do you want to travel to next?
Austria has inspired me to want to check out more places in eastern Europe.
Not only is it a continent full of unique places, but it is also a location where there are all kinds of interesting examples of European wildlife that I’ve only previously seen in books.
Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?
In work, I want to become a greybeard senior or principal ecologist at Arbtech, with a lot more experience and knowledge of all things plant and BNG related and recognition as an authority in that field.
And out of work, if Baz – my band’s social media guru – keeps doing such an excellent job of plugging and networking, hopefully Spriggan Mist will be top of the contemporary UK prog scene.
What is a goal you have for the future, in or out of work?
In work, my goal is to become a senior or principal ecologist who specialises quite rightly in all things plant and habitat based.
I want to continue to improve upon my ID skills and habitat knowledge. That is a rather vague goal, so more specifically, I want to master biodiversity net gain, and I want to capitalise on opportunities to experience writing protected plant licences and develop practical translocation/propagation skills.
Out of work, in the excitement of being in a band that is gaining significant momentum in our genre, I’ve neglected my endeavours as a solo artist. In an effort to counteract this, I have set myself a goal this year to get my first professionally mixed and mastered album released and start doing more solo gigs again.
Fay joined Arbtech in July 2020.
