Philipp Hermann

The Environment Agency of Cologne maintains a 24/7 standy-by duty. It gets alerted in case of accidents or natural catastrophes that pose a threat to the environment e.g. soil or groundwater. Once alerted the main tasks are coordinating immediate actions at site, documenting damages and assinging consultants.

I'm in charge of licensing and monitoring groundwater uses like wells, geothermic wells and heat pumps, material influx in the groundwater and construction sites within aquifers. Additionally, I am part of a workgroup that monitors groundwater contaminations by perfluoridated tensides.

My job is to pretreat the samples for isotope measurement. That includes documentation and dissolving from sediments and other interfering tissues.

As a trainee I gained knowledge in DIN-normed procedures in soil- and construction-ground exploration like ram-probing, core-drilling, soil- and waste disposal gas analytics, water infiltration test and grain size determation. Also I accompanied renaturation and removing of industry facilites (planing, sampling and calculating costs).

I was embedded in field work, collection and sampled dinosaur teeth for my diploma thesis.

After my basic training I was seconded to the German Army Forces Command in Koblenz. My duty was to observe the mailings of our group, supervise new soldiers, support the generals-staff and communicate with other divisions.