David

When the Council was abolished under local government reorganisation in 1998, I took the well trodden path of becoming a consultant for my second career.

My first assignment for Waterman Aspen was on a 16 week secondment basis for Westminster City Council in April 2000. Since then, I have worked continuously for WA at several local authorities on secondment, mainly in regard to management consultancy and interim management positions.

I find this arrangement particularly enjoyable and rewarding as it offers such a variety of different opportunities, without the stresses prevalent in permanent employment, thereby leading to a high job satisfaction. So much so, I am still working full time.

With such a wide variety of work opportunity throughout the Company, Waterman Aspen can offer excellent career prospects for engineers and technicians at all levels of responsibility.”

 Bob

“I joined Waterman Aspen in 2002 after leaving Fife Council during a restructuring (downsizing) of their Roads / Transportation services. At first I was a little hesitant to leave the employment environment where I had worked for 28 years but realised it would be good to ‘do something different’. While job hunting I was approached by a former Fife colleague, who worked for Waterman Aspen, who thought I might be interested in chatting about the prospects of employment. An early offer followed, and after some thought and research I accepted the offer, mainly because it offered a varied work pattern, working for different clients. Having to travel around the central belt of Scotland did not bother me, and there was financial support for this.

I have worked for several different Clients, all of them involving local or central government – so much for escaping that scene! The difference now is that I am not part of the LA staff structure, but am in the Client’s office providing a specialist technical and professional service to Senior staff, without the politics of Local Government, or the responsibility of team management. This I find much more rewarding, particularly as most of the projects I have been involved in have been new issues where there is much scope for creative work. The resulting high level of job satisfaction makes up for the additional effort needed.

When changing jobs, the total remuneration package is always important and I have been very happy with this aspect. It is great to have the ‘fringe benefits’ of private practice – remember, I worked in Local Government for many years, where even being treated to a sandwich at lunch time by a contractor or rep was sinful!

From the nature and extent of the work which is carried out by me and my other colleagues, it is obvious that there are many clients who are desperate to secure the expert help that staff of Waterman Aspen can provide. This either helps them deal with a localised hump in the workload, or helps source a specialist for a particular task. My experience has been that our efforts are much appreciated by Clients, many of whom realise that previous downsizing of their organisation has left it without capacity to respond to new demands on their staff resource. Why not think about joining us for a varied and interesting career change? “