We know that most site managers are acutely aware of the need to having management plans for their conservation and amenity sites, but often struggle to find the time and resources to prepare them. Conservation plans are critically important in understanding sites and defining appropriate management, but this is really just the first step. Acting on the plan, recording activities and reviewing outcomes is what really creates plans that are dynamic, useful and long term.

Using a combination of field visits and workshop sessions, our newly established conservation planning team can help you to prepare and implement plans quickly and efficiently. We prefer to work alongside your specialist staff that have the ‘on the ground’ knowledge, and to use our expertise to collate information, to identify key features and site dynamics and to prepare the plan itself. This participatory approach relieves local staff of much of the burden involved in plan preparation, but uses their knowledge to the full and gives them plan ownership.

We have successfully adopted this approach with the National Trust in Northern Ireland where we helped to prepare plans for 20 major sites, including the Giants Causeway and Strangford Lough.  By running a series of two day workshops, we pulled in staff managing similar sites to brainstorm the issues around these sites. Regional Conservation Advisor, Phil Davidson, said that “working with exeGesIS has proved an effective way to get our management plans up and going and their approach of working alongside our staff has made the whole process more inclusive and stimulating.”

A unique part of our service is that we hand over a complete management planning software system containing your plan. This provides you with the software tools needed to implement and monitor your planned projects, to centralise all site records and to keep the whole plan up to date.

For more information on CMS software, click here

If you are interested in creating dynamic and practical plans for your countryside sites then please contact David Mitchel at davidm@esdm.co.uk or +44 (0)1874 713077

For current recruitment opportunities please click here