Graduate Award Judges Are Looking for "Something Special"

IEMA Graduate Award Judge Dave Farebrother offers advice to those nominating a Graduate practitioner ahead of the deadline.

The nomination deadline for the 2011 IEMA?Graduate Award is on Friday 30th September - just over two weeks from now - and the Judges are looking forward to seeing the entries in early October.

Dave Farebrother (pictured right), Environmental Director at IEMA Graduate Award Sponsor Land Securities, has headed the judging panel for three years. Here he offers some insight into what nominators can do to help their chosen Graduate's chances of standing out from the crowd to become the next winner.

You've been a panel judge for three years. Over that time, have you noticed any changes to the calibre of award nominations?

We are getting more entries now but I would still like to see even more as there must be a lot more people out there who are contributing and achieving a lot. The main frustration is that many of the nominations are not accompanied by enough suitable evidence.

In terms of calibre, the top end of entries are getting better but there is a bulk in the middle that are really just about someone just doing their job, which is great, but we really need to see something special.

Could you describe what your ideal winner will have achieved, demonstrated by their nomination materials?

I don't think that there is any perfect answer but I do think that but the winner and the shortlisted candidates should have a mixture of some � or even all � of the following:

• they are doing more than just their job; they devised something out of the ordinary;
• they show passion for what they do;
• they can show some measurable results;
• and they show some evidence of leadership.

That's not always possible but showing some innovation or even setting some new standards are great ways to get us interested and excited.

Look out for the full interview with Dave in the September issue of 'the environmentalist'.