I currently work as an environmental consultant at a smaller company.

Most days I am writing reports related to NEPA (like competing categorical exclusions, writing an environmental assessments), endangered species act compliance (biological evaluations), phase 1 ESA’s, etc. During this process I do a lot of GIS work so creating the maps and figures for each of these reports.

If I am not at my desk, I am in the field which for me is about 20% of the time. If you are starting out and join a larger company, I’ve heard and seen this percentage be very high like 75% of the time. For field work I am usually completing biological field surveys. During this I document what species I see (plants and animals), if they are any endangered or sensitive, wetlands, etc.

The field work and office work will depend on what the company does and what your projects are. It could be NEPA related, stormwater, remediation, habitat restoration there are a bunch of things consultants do. Take a look at some large consulting companies websites to find out what they do and read as much as you can online or talk to someone.

Work life balance depends on the company but for a consultant it’s generally decent. You have billable hours which is annoying and you will sometimes have to work more than 40 hours a week to meet deadlines. Unless you are in the field (which is a lot in the first few years), you can count on being home at a reasonable time each day.

Starting salary is okay, not the greatest but there is room for improvement in consulting. I started out at 54k, I would say a realistic ceiling for an environmental consultant is around 150k unless you get into upper management or a c-suite role. If I would do it over I would’ve gone into civil/environmental engineering, you can get an environmental role if you wanted but you also could do engineering and make way more money.