Environmental or Urban Planner for solar farms and BESS in Australia

Enhar has an exciting opportunity for an experienced and committed Environmental Planner to join our growing team, on a remote work from home basis for our hybrid Austrlian + Philippines based company.

About us

Enhar's mission is to increase the pace of solar, wind and battery energy storate systems (BESS) deployment in Australia through site origination, high integrity land agreements and efficient development approvals.

We've proven ourselves over 15 years business with steady growth and expansion of our reputation and client base. Our team are passionate about deploying renewable energy and storage technology to solve the climate crisis. The renewable energy revolution must be both rapid and durable and that is what we are all about.

About you

You are an experienced environmental planning approvals professional with experience of large scale renewable energy projects such as battery, solar, or wind farm sites. Ideally you have experience of Australian projects and state based planning systems such as New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

You have an extremely strong report writing capability, able to produce reports which withstand high scrutiny from planning authorities and public stakholders often seeking to find faults in the project submission. This means your reports are clear, succinct, with perfect grammar and spellling, well formatted for visual ease and have no unncessary complexity.

You have experience in submitting or assessing development approval applications for large scale solar farm and battery storage projects, or similar projects internationally.

You are experienced in the field of development approvals and qualified in a relevant discipline such as town and country planning and/or environmental assessment, or environmental planning.

Your personal values align with Enhar's mission statement: building climate solutions by empowering people with clean energy technology.

About the Role

Your Strategic Objectives are:

·  Prepare planning applications and planning feasibility reports for 5-10 projects per year totaling over 500MW

· Increase Enhar's efficiency and quality of project development approval outcomes

Your Success Factors include the following regular activities:

·  Prepare and lodge development approval applications, by using high level report writing skills

·  Communicate with subcontractors, internal team and our clients to drive fast outcomes avoiding delays to development approvals

·  Assist business development and prepare quotations for further work from ideal clients

Your Core Competencies are:

• Fast, accurate, focussed
• Decisive project manager willing to take control of projects and stakeholders to drive outcomes in development approvals
• Convert site constraint complexities into simple workable solutions and agreements which stakeholders accept
• Take responsibility for planning permit outcomes and timeframes and take a strong pride in fast efficient delivery
• Write concise, effective planning permit applications and handle the administration of planning permits
• Town and country planning experience and qualifications
• Environmental assessment experience
• Ability to obtain high quality drawings to accompany planning applications from our in-house team of project draftsmen, hold them to high standards on time and quality
• Establish relationships with subcontract environmental consultants relevant to solar/BESS
• Write very well structured, clear reports, planning applications in fluent English with correct grammar and spelling
• Highly competent in software for remote working including Outlook, Outlook shared calendar, Zoom meetings, Teams meetings, cloud based project management systems, weekly timesheet recording, cloud file management especially Dropbox, ability to use phone for above functions
• Ability to sketch drawings and diagrams to instruct our drafting team

Qualifications you Must Have:

·        Qualification in either Urban Planning or Environmental Planning and assessment for permits

·        Experience working as a consult for planning approvals of renewable/storage developer companies or government approval departments

·        Experienced in solar farm and BESS project planning permits

·        Experience in development approvals in Australia such as NSW, SA, QLD or VIC, or New Zealand or UK (similar planning systems).

·        Understanding of, or ability to learn fast the planning permit regulations and approvals process relating to solar and BESS projects in our target regions: NSW, SA, VIC and QLD

·        At least 10+ years professoinal experience including 5+ years working with planning permits including renewable energy or storage projects, either as approving authority or applicant or both.

·        Professional level English speaking, writing and reading skills

·        Client facing skills, charisma, ability to built trust and rapport with clients

·        Philippines based working from home

Qualifications we'd like you to have:

·       Skills with GIS including ArcGIS  

·       Member of professional associations relating to planning and/or environmental assessment

·       Good understanding of technology of solar farms and BESS projects functionality and technical components and footprint layouts

·       Experience with land acquisition for infrastructure or large commercial scale projects

About our client services

Current Enhar projects include multiple large scale BESS development approvals (QLD) and solar farm feasibility and due diligence for major international and Australian developers with large scale pipelines in Australia. Our clients also include local councils.

Typical project scales are 100MW and above, located in South Australia, Victoria, NSW and QLD.

We serve clients through site identification, land negotiation, development approval management and concept design services, for projects up to several 100's of MW in scale.

We have an established team including an experienced project manager, a project engineer draftsman, a 3D graphics designer, GIS and a senior director responsible for this department.

Our team in Philippines complements our Australian team.

You will meet in person with our Philippines based team twice a year at a venue near Manilla, for 2 day meetings in Feb and October each year.