It’s really important to us that we run a high-quality event that people can enjoy safely.  As the BioBlitz is taking place on land owned by Bristol City Council, we have to make sure they’re happy with our plans.

As a result, we have long application form to fill out and lots of things to think about – from toilet provision, to catering, to health and safety and first aid, we have to make sure we cover everything.

The great thing about the Council’s website is the event-planning toolkit that makes sure we have guidance for just about everything we need.

The form looks quite intimidating but, working through it methodically, it leads you through all the things you need to think about to make sure the event is well organized and safe to attend.

Even better, a member of the “Events Licensing” team made time for me today to chat through my half-completed form, point out where we needed to do a bit more work and gave me some guidance about first aid and things like that.  Excellent service indeed.

We’ve got some more work to do, but I’m feeling a lot more confident about this key piece of work now.

So, these last few days and weeks have involved a lot of work on our budget.  We have a finite amount of grant funding available from our award from the Heritage Lottery Fund, All Our Stories programme and we need to use it wisely.

We’ve been immensely lucky because the owner of Kings Weston House, Norman, has very generously offered us the use of some rooms in the house to be our base camp.  This means we’ll have somewhere safe and weatherproof to keep ourselves and our equipment during the BioBlitz. The role of volunteers and kind people like Norman is central to all our work in the park and has been especially welcome for the BioBlitz.

We’re working with BNHC and they have some money available to contribute towards the event but there’s still a lot of juggling to do.

Here are just some of the costs that KWAG and BNHC are covering

• An accessible toilet so that anyone who has mobility difficulties has a loo to use without difficulty
• Catering for the volunteers to thank them for the time they’re so generous with
• Printing of signs, data sheets for information gathering and a booklet with information about the site and the house
• License to Bristol City Council in order to use the estate for our event
• First aid cover
• Some of the project management time

In addition we’re also getting help from University of the West of England to have a staffed and equipped field lab on site; from Wildscreen to help us document the event in film and pictures and other people and organizations too…

Ever wondered how we make sure that everthing that needs to get done actually gets done and that different people aren’t trying to complete the same bits of work?

The title “Project Manager” sounds pretty grand but it’s the job of the Project Manager (or in the case of this project…the Project Managers) to keep a good eye on things and make sure that all the jobs that need doing are allocated to people and that we all know when we’re supposed to do things by.

This isn’t the sort of information you can easily keep in your head so we all find ways to write it down in a meaningful way so we can share it amongst the project team so everyone knows what’s what.  If we were building an office building, we’d do something similar but it would be a very complicated list.

For us, a simple list is more than sufficient and we’ll update as progress happens.

This is the list as it looks at the moment

Bioblitz checklist0301

Certainly seems like there’s a lot to do.

A key part of the Bioblitz is the first part of day one when we involve local schools in identifying wildlife at the site.  It’s important to us that local pupils visit so they get an opportunity to make the most of their nearby green spaces.

It’s well known that people with access to good quality green spaces have better mental and physical health and by having an opportunity to be involved in such a big science project, we hope to encourage the next generation of scientists.

So this month we’ve been starting to make contact with some local schools to secure their involvement in the project.  Early indications are encouraging, but we need to keep in contact to ensure we get the right number of people joining in on the day.

Well here we are, it’s the middle of January and it’s about three and a half months until the day of the Bioblitz.

Organizing an event like this takes more than an afternoon so, despite the recent bad weather, the day sees the main organisers:  Dave and Jules from KWAG, Ben, Matt and Savita from BNHC, Liz from EV, Bill from the National Trust and Michael from English Heritage, stomping around the whole site to work out where activities will be carried out.

We all walked about three miles around the estate, slipping down snowy hills, climbing over stiles and then encountering fallen trees in the woods but at the end of it we all had a better idea of how the BioBlitz would work on site.

Now for the detailed planning.