I went AI-free for one last assignment. It was brutal.

I wanted to prove a point - to myself, mostly. One last E&S monitoring assignment. No AI, no shortcuts. Just me, our old industry methods with a mountain of documents. It was supposed to be nostalgic. It ended up being a harsh reality check.

The reason behind choosing to go AI free was partly to reconnect with the part of me that used to do it all. To remember the grind - and feel it fully - before I say goodbye to that chapter. It was also an experiment to better fine-tune marketing and ‘feel the pain’ of practitioners again. It’s not like I’d forgotten - that pain is exactly why I started E&S Solutions in the first place. Still. I’ve done this work for over a decade. I used to drive myself on being fast, efficient, sharp. But as things have changed, so have I and the way I work.

The reality hit me in the face and took me back in time to my pre-ESRA frustrations: a 1000 pages of documents to read, cross-check management plans, google national laws, IFI standards, industry guidelines, notes in my notebook and laptop, trying to track the gaps, realising things are buried in annexes..I’m sure you know what I am talking about. I tried to romanticise it thinking I am some sort of a detective solving the puzzle pieces of an important case. Which is true. Every project is important. However, the sheer mental load of doing it all without support was insane. I had 37 tabs open, 15 documents mid-scroll, and one crash that wiped an hour’s worth of notes. I was knee-deep in PDFs that contradicted each other, with annexes that seemed designed to hide not help.

We budgeted 2 days for document review. I spent 5. And that’s not counting the late-night reading while on site. It basically cut my day rate in half for the work. Luckily, I have a memory like an elephant, nevertheless I still had to go back again and again to remind myself of important facts that got lost in the brain fog. The way I used to operate became unbearable. The entrepreneur in me kicked in and was screaming: get help. But who could I hire to do the job I signed up to do? Nobody. Me, myself and I are pushing through.

What my tools do for me is making the unbearable easy-peasy.

I have a central knowledge base where I can easily access all national legislation, industry guidelines, national decrees and applicable standards. Bye bye googling, welcome to myESRA. Looking for best practice from other projects? Doing background check on the client to see their other projects? Unsure about industry standards? Want a template for your report? No problem!

You might question how myESRA helps with document review. It does not. We have privatESRA for that. Knowing that these documents are never disclosed and confidential, we designed privatESRA to keep information safe and secure. So in a parallel universe, I just upload these documents and ‘chat’ with them. I can also just select a few management plans and compare sections to make sure that roles and responsibilities are the same, that the commitment to monthly EHS meetings is the same across management plans etc. It’s not just about laziness and saving time. It’s about doing better work with more accuracy and compliance, reducing the project risks by having energy left over for actual judgement calls, not document scavenger hunts. My conservative estimate is, a 60% reduction in time allocated for document review.

Forget the myths about AI replacing your expertise. Our tools are designed to supercharge your capabilities, freeing you to focus on strategic, human-centred decisions. AI doesn’t replace the work I do on site. It amplifies it. It means I walk into a meeting with complete clarity - able to guide conversations, flag gaps, and focus on people, not paper. I believe, my biggest contribution in this project was visiting the site, explaining what requirements mean in practice, what are inconsistencies and what are the real risks to people and operations. Would AI take away from it? Not at all! It would make me become a consultant on steroids, a supercharged expert who has all the information at her fingertips so she can focus on being present and using her expert judgement.

This assignment tested my patience and reminded me why I will never stop campaigning for responsible AI use in our industry. You all are incredible specialists! It is time for your expertise to shine - through presence, pragmatism and real-world problem solving! The old way? It’s holding us back. The irony is real: this niche segment of the sustainability working in unsustainable ways. The good news? We don’t have to do that anymore. The world is changing fast and we should leverage technology in a practitioner-focused manner. Curious how this could change your workflow? Book a call with us to ensure you are on the of leaders in the future.