Westbury Environmental
Workflow development and QGIS training for an environmental consultancy
Client Background
Westbury Environmental are a specialist environmental consultancy in the UK that supports businesses in managing environmental compliance, with expertise in permit applications, WM3 waste classification, fire prevention plans and odour, dust and noise assessments.
And they work with operators and regulators to make sure the regulatory side of things is watertight.
Westbury Environmental
Workflow development and QGIS training for an environmental consultancy
The Problem
Westbury Environmental did a GIS basics course with me, but afterwards, they needed extra support. So, they brought me in to address knowledge gaps within the team, as they still had inconsistencies in output mapping and data quality, causing issues in their day-to-day work.
Their key problem areas included:
Advice on improving drawings, shapes and attribute tables in projects
Developing professional outputs and standardising the data
Advanced training to best utilise the software efficiently
Improving the look outputs for their reports
Having already worked with Sian and the Westbury team, I was really excited to get stuck in and bring more consistency and clarity to their processes.
The Result
By bringing me back on board, Westbury Environmental now has a much clearer, more consistent way of working with project data in QGIS, with far less variation in how outputs are put together across the team.
Their new QGIS template and workflow bring everything into one place:
Datasets
Styling
Map layouts
And they’re structured to be reused across projects, making it easier to set up new work.
The team now has real, hands-on confidence in using it properly, having trained to build and use the template themselves — from pulling in datasets and creating layers through to styling and map outputs.
And the result?
A massive reduction in inconsistencies in their processes, making day-to-day mapping smoother and giving the team something solid and practical they can actually build on as work develops.
They’re saving hours per project, what a result!
What I Did
As part of this Westbury Environmental QGIS training and workflow development project, I worked with Sian to review how their data was created, including where it came from and how it was used.
This gave me a clear picture of the existing workflow and where support would be most useful.
From there, I split the work into two steps:
Research & Development
Training (for staff to learn how to create the templates)
The R&D focused on shaping the underlying workflow — looking at data sourcing, where automation could reduce manual steps (such as receptor distance calculations).
And the training gave the team practical hands-on experience.
Creating a template and workflow this way future-proofs their investment by upskilling staff and creating a repeatable set of steps that saves time and resources for each project.
But that’s a surface-level explanation; here's the in-depth stuff:
1. Research & Development
I carried out research into the most effective ways to structure and generate the data required for Westbury’s project types. A key focus was identifying where processes could be simplified or automated to reduce manual input.
For example, I explored how receptor distances to site boundaries could be generated automatically rather than calculated manually and how this could be built into a repeatable workflow.
This stage informed both the training content and the development of the master QGIS template.
Work included:
Creating dataset lists with sources, attribution statements, licensing information and update schedules
Documenting scripts and expressions used to automate attribute data and map layout elements
Developing the workflow structure used throughout the training sessions
Producing example symbology based on attribute data
Creating background map elements and layout components as SVG files
2. Training
After the R&D, I delivered three online training sessions, each lasting around 3 hours, with recordings shared afterwards for reference:
Session 1 – Sourcing, saving and styling national datasets
This session covered how to find, download and manage datasets for use across projects. It included Ordnance Survey contextual mapping at different scales, receptor data sourcing, web-based data layers and SVG symbol use.
Session 2 – QGIS template creation
Next, the team built a complete QGIS project template, including data layers, symbology, forms and map layouts. We also covered project setup, virtual layers, map themes and how to structure everything into a single reusable template.
Session 3 – Workflow process and practice
The final session focused on applying the template in a live workflow. This included building site boundaries, adding receptor data, loading and tracing from client PDFs or DXFs and producing map outputs using the template structure.