Something new crops up every single day

ME AND MY JOB: For Aoife Grogan, a normal day's work as a spatial planner can take her to a variety of urban and rural locations. Catherine Foley reports

There's a lot of "traipsing through the muck with maps" in Aoife Grogan's job. When she visits a building site as part of her job as an assistant planner with Fingal County Council, she dons wellingtons, a hat and a reflector jacket.

This is exactly what she loves about her job. "It's the fact that it's not completely desk-bound. It's very up-to-the-minute. It involves such a range of subjects - the environment, the economy, social issues. It's so broad. You're not pigeon-holed into one thing - something new crops up every day," she says, adding "it's actually quite scientific. There are different phases in a plan, but at the same time there is a lot of scope for creativity, for vision, for a plan, at the higher levels of planning." Part of Grogan's job involves making recommendations, which are based on reports she carries out.

"My job would involve looking at individual planning applications for extensions to houses, and small agricultural buildings." The Fingal area stretches from half-way down the motorway, from Baldoyle to Sutton, along the Meath border and includes Balbriggan and Blanchardstown.

"It's a really good centre to work in. You get both rural and urban in the north county, as opposed to the Corporation areas, which are completely urban." She is involved in completing initial field work surveying rural villages such as Rowlstown, Coolquoy and Garristown.

This week she has been visiting building sites compiling housing statistics for a report which will be produced by the Department of the Environment. She assesses the rate of change, how many houses are occupied, how many have a roof on but are not occupied, how many more are yet to be built. The list enables the planners "to keep a track of what's going on", she says. "We track all new developments and you can follow the rate of change. There is no margin for error. They have to be spot on. You have to be precise.

"It's very interesting, especially in the summer," she says. "You have to be strict in the way you work, follow a plan and relate it to people, and translate that into a map or a report."

There are opportunities for travel in her job also, she says. The Irish planning system is very similar to the Australian planning system, and Canada and England have a lot in common also. "A lot of people after one or two years would go to Australia for a year. Your qualification is recognised out there. It's a qualification that you can take with you."

Her final-year thesis in regional and urban planning in UCD involved looking at polycentric urban development - which, she explains, is "a spatial planning concept" - from the perspective of the European Union. Examining Europe's spatial development, she continues, it looks at European core centres, such as Amsterdam and London, and at Dublin and the rest of Ireland in the context of wider European strategy. Her thesis took seven months to complete. It involved completing a case study of Carlow and Kilkenny and conducting a number of interviews with planners from the Department of the Environment.

In her work, she has to get out of her office, drive out and inspect the actual sites. "You get out and meet people. You have a checklist that you should be looking out for. How close the extension is to the road. Is it going to overlook an adjoining house or garden? How does it fit into the streetscape? You try to visualise how the development will look and reflect on that. You write up a report and you make recommendations on whether it should be refused or granted."

The up-coming review of the county is "the most challenging work" on the horizon. But, of course, everything is interesting, including all the little plans because "there are so many aspects to them".