Katherine talks about her time with LANDHQ
My name is Katherine, and I am studying a Bachelor of Environmental Planning in the Society Stream at the University of Waikato. I am about to go into my fourth and final year of my degree. Jess offered me the exciting opportunity of working for LandHQ as an intern over my summer break.
LandHQ’s expertise in subdivision consents, land-use consents, environmental consenting, Iwi and Māori land development, and project management strongly correlated with my interests in which I was eager to cooperate in.
During my studies, I was surprised to the vast range of elements that define environmental planning. Environmental planning goes beyond just the environment. It encapsulates cultural, economic, environmental, political, and social perspectives that come together in shaping how our surroundings are today. Environmental planning involves taking on both small and large scale projects. This can range from assessing subdivision and land use compliance, preparation of resource consents – to tackling larger scale matters like climate change adaptation, transportation, city infrastructure projects and many more! Planning has a diverse range of fields that allow for many different opportunities across various sectors.
Over the course of this internship, I have applied my learnings from my degree to real-world scenarios. This ranged from the preparation of district plan assessments in assessing compliance of subdivision, land use rules and environmental consenting requirements. It also included preparing resource consent applications, interpreting multiple reports, creating consent conditions trackers, and many other related tasks. I even had the opportunity to partake in some field work, looking in person at sites we were working on. I particularly enjoyed how each project was unique as it exposed me to variety of different challenges allowing me to think critically. I’ve found this internship has created a great foundation of experience for the beginning of my planning career.
For anybody else studying in the same field, I highly recommend gaining some experience during their studies as it’s made a huge difference in widening my depth of knowledge and understanding towards environmental planning. I feel a greater sense of confidence moving forward into my final year of study and potential opportunities that will come afterwards.
Thank you so much Jess and Mark for this amazing chance to see how environmental planning is applied in the real world! I’m very grateful for this experience and being a part of meaningful projects.
-Kath