Kia ora! I’m Ella, a second-year Graduate Scientist at GHD in Wellington, New Zealand. I work mainly in contaminated land investigation and management, but I’m always looking to build new skills and learn from other teams. I graduated from the University of Canterbury as part of the inaugural Bachelor of Environmental Science (Honours)1 cohort, majoring in contamination. The degree was designed to be a more practical, career-focused environmental science qualification, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the field. My main areas of interests are emerging contaminants, toxicology, and using digital solutions to improve how we work.
Why did you join as an ALGA member?
Everyone in my team gets an ALGA membership, so I became a member without really knowing what ALGA was at first. Since then, I’ve enjoyed figuring out what it offers. I have been enjoying the tech talks and connecting with people outside my company. The environment team in our Wellington office is small, so it’s been a great way to see what’s going on more widely.
What does your job involve?
My work primarily focuses on contaminated land and groundwater investigations, reporting, and management plans. I also help manage our environmental database (ESdat) across New Zealand – maintaining data quality and troubleshooting issues as they come up. I’ve also been getting more involved in internal digital initiatives, which is something I’m really interested in.
What part of your job do you enjoy most?
My favourite kind of work is anything that feels like a puzzle, where I get to be a “detective” in investigative work. I enjoy helping people work through problems, especially with ESdat, and I’ve ended up being someone people come to for it. I like figuring out where things have gone wrong in a process and how to fix them, as well as finding better and more efficient ways of doing things. Having AI tools means I can explore more potential solutions, even using software I don’t have formal training in. That said, I have to be careful not to get too carried away, know when to abandon an idea, and remember to actually get on with the work…..
What is one item you could not live without and why?
A very hard question, how literally does one take it? I’d have to say my water bottle – the emotional support water bottle is real (it’s a gen Z thing… I’m not crazy). I don’t go anywhere without it.
Tell us a fun or unexpected fact about yourself!
I’m into roller skating, the groovy dancing kind not the smashing into other people kind – although I could see myself being good at that too. Tragically, there isn’t a roller disco in my city, if I ever won the lottery changing this would be a top priority.
How are you currently using AI in your work, and do you think it will change our industry?
I mainly use LLMs to support report writing, helping me refine and structure paragraphs more efficiently. I also use them as a guide when working with or troubleshooting software I don’t use often. For tools like ArcGIS, where it’s easy to forget where things are (so many buttons…), finding the right instructions online can be time consuming.
It will change the industry in some way, but past experience shows how unreliable our predictions about AI can be. I think the focus should be on how we can use it now, and how we create an environment where people can find the best ways to use it. I’ve seen interest in using AI in the workplace held back by uncertainty about what’s allowed. Many people’s first ideas involve uploading or sharing some level of data with a model, which creates hesitation. Clear messaging, with practical examples, needs to keep up so everyone, not just those already familiar with AI, feels confident to experiment and find where it adds value.
What’s your take on AI, exciting opportunity, daunting challenge, or somewhere in between?
AI sits somewhere in between for me. Overly enthusiastic messaging around it can feel tone deaf for several reasons. Whether it’s fully justified or not, there’s a real sense of uncertainty about future careers, especially alongside high youth unemployment. And in environmental fields like ours, many of us chose this path because of our passion for environmental protection, so I see a quiet tension between personal values and shifting expectations that doesn’t often feel acknowledged.
At the same time, I do see real value in AI when it’s used to support how we already work. There are many valuable things I’ve learned to do that I don’t think I could have without it. But there’s also a lot of hype that doesn’t always hold up. I read an opinion piece by Professor Daswin De Silva2 last week where he talked about AI “nothing burgers”, ideas about using AI which get a lot of attention but don’t deliver much in practice. That article really put what I think a lot of us have been feeling into words.
I see us gaining the most value from AI (in its current available state) if we approach it for what it actually is: a tool trained on large datasets to recognise patterns and make predictions. It tends to do its best work in specific, targeted use cases where relevant data already exists at scale. For example, there have been cases where AI has been used to analyse satellite and drone imagery to help locate missing people, which makes sense given the volume of imagery available it has been trained on.
How did you find the recent WasteMINZ and ALGA joint conference?
It was my first conference, and while it was pretty exhausting, it was a really cool experience being surrounded by so many people working in similar areas. I mainly work in contamination, so it was interesting to see projects outside that, especially the Auckland Council work on relocating and deconstructing houses after 2023’s storm events – super cool. I also really enjoyed Tom Wilson’s presentation on using AI to help build a 3D model to guide contaminated land excavation work. I thought it was an absolutely excellent example of the direction we should be going in. I really appreciated his grounded delivery, acknowledging both the positive and negative impacts this may have.
1. Bachelor of Environmental Science with Honours (BEnvSci(Hons)). University of Canterbury. https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/study/academic-study/qualifications/bachelor-of-environmental-science-with-honours/
2. Daswin De Silva (Professor of AI and Analytics, La Trobe University, Australia). May 29, 2026. The AI ‘nothingburgers’ you don’t hear about. https://www.pressreader.com/new-zealand/the-press/20260529/281749866016050 (Available to read link)