Some of you may click away after seeing the dreaded words of 'health and safety'. We all fear these words because of the beaurocracy and the amount of time it takes up that we could be assisting our clients.

Health and safety is a paramount to what we do at Ecology by Design. Our team our important to us and looking after them is constantly at the forefront of our minds. Ecologists work long hours, often at night and in remote locations which means that just churning out the same standard risk assessment will not cut it. We do spend the time filling in these assessments but we also put into practice anything we can to reduce the risk to our consultants, clients and the general public.

Following a conversation with an old colleague; Tristan Evans, he mentioned about a new great product which he had been using. It did not take long after researching the product to place an order ourselves.

SPOT provide various GPS based devices for tracking and keeping connected to the team. The SPOT Gen 3 enables us to provide all lone workers with a device that with the simple press of a button can send a distress message to a colleague, an SOS with GPS tag to the emergence services or just a quick "I'm ok" status to keep those team managers in the office happy.  The device is small, light weight, easy to use and attaches to our normal field gear providing that important level of safety when working remotely or alone.

We will be testing a number of these devices through the 2016 season, hopefully we will never have to use one in an emergency but just that reassurance that help is only the touch of button away is priceless.