Meet the Team: Kate Baker

Kate Baker

Office: Antea Group UK

Practice Area: Environmental Planning

Areas of Expertise: Ground Risk, Soil and Water Contamination, Quantitative Risk Assessment

About Me in 140 Characters: A geo-environmental consultant of 30 years with technical specialisms in risk assessment for land contamination. In my free time I love open water swimming.

Get to Know Kate...

What is your favorite thing about being a Ground Risk Practitioner? 

Every day is different. Each site, client objective, environmental setting, and contamination distribution is unique. I could be travelling to a site, analysing data in spreadsheets at my desk, in meetings with legal teams or regulators, or getting muddy in a field wearing a hard hat and safety boots filling pots with soil. I thrive on the variety that my job brings me.

What is the most interesting project you’ve ever worked on? 

A long term project at the manufacturing headquarters of a health and beauty retail chain. The soil and groundwater chemistry was interesting, we got to do some innovative field and lab studies, the client was a delight to work for, and the regulators were engaged and pragmatic.  And there was a shop on the site which sold health and beauty products at greatly discounted rates!

What is a key ingredient for success as a Ground Risk practitioner?

Effective communication. Ground Risk practitioners work with a wide variety of people including site managers, clients, regulators, sub-contractors, colleagues and the general public.  We need to be able modify our communication styles to effectively manage and get across (sometimes complex technical) information and interpretations into language that can be understood by each audience.

What’s your favorite part of your job? 

Getting deep into the data to thoroughly understand the ground model and potential risks on a site, and then simplifying the findings to provide key risk management solutions for my clients.

Just for Fun...

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A veterinary surgeon.

If you had one month off, where would you go or what would you do?

To the Lake District to swim in as many of the lakes/waters as I could manage in the time.

Is there something unique that people might not know about you?

As a child I loved pigs and everything I owned, from clothing to bedding to mugs, even playing cards, was adorned with them. There are still plenty of piggie items in my house today.

What historical or fictional character would you most like to work with? 

Marie Curie (minus the exposure to radiation). She lived and worked in a time where female scientists were rare, but still managed to conduct robust and cutting edge research and to be internationally recognised for it.