Professional Profile
Strategic infrastructure leader with more than 25 years' experience
across the UK and New Zealand water sectors. My work connects
operational delivery, strategic planning, commercial innovation and
evidence-based decisions. I currently lead strategic planning for
nationally significant water infrastructure and a geographically
distributed team of seven planners.
Key Achievements
- First-of-kind delivery: Project managed the UK's first sewage heat recovery installation at Borders College. Introduced telemetry-linked temperature monitoring to test concerns about downstream treatment. The scheme received the Green Gown Award for Best Newcomer in 2017 and Scottish Green Energy Award for Best Innovation in 2018.
- Portfolio Leadership: Managing £100M+ capital investment portfolios for strategic trunk main, aqueduct, tunnel, and subsea pipeline infrastructure. Coverage includes almost 6,000km of trunk mains, 1,500km of raw water mains, 20+ aqueducts, 20+ tunnels, 23 subsea mains, 53,000 air valves, and almost half a million valves.
- Network Resilience: Confirmed and enhanced backfeed capabilities across Scottish water networks, assessed for every Water Operational Area serving more than 15,000 properties.
- Failure prediction research: Questioned the use of Remaining Service Life as a proxy for Likelihood of Failure, researched international Random Forest applications and developed a proof of concept using a synthetic dataset of approximately 30,000 pipes. Scottish Water's Analytics team is progressing implementation and testing with external expertise.
- Strategic influence: Developed a staged, reversible alternative to a proposed pressure-control intervention at Milngavie. If testing supports the approach, it could avoid a substantial capital replacement and ongoing attendance costs.
- Leakage Transformation: Led creation of over 100 District Metered Areas serving 150,000+ properties.
- International Experience: Managed hydraulic modelling and daily water operations at Timaru District Council, New Zealand.
Professional Experience
Technical Team Manager - Strategic Water Infrastructure
Scottish Water
July 2021 - Present
- Lead a team of seven planners delivering strategic planning and capital investment programmes for trunk mains, aqueducts, tunnels, subsea pipelines, and critical valve infrastructure across Scotland.
- Direct consultant resources and external partners across a £100M+ portfolio.
- Collaborate with UK water industry partners on research initiatives, best practice, and emerging technology evaluation.
- Led a newly formed team through organisational change and constrained investment, involving people in resetting priorities and redirecting capacity into stronger failure methods and asset-specific approaches.
- Initiated Random Forest research for pipeline likelihood-of-failure prediction, including an early synthetic-data proof of concept and collaboration with the in-house Analytics team and external specialists.
Strategic Planner - Water Resilience
Scottish Water
May 2018 - July 2021
- Analysed and confirmed network backfeed capabilities to strengthen supply resilience.
- Delivered capital projects from targeted interventions to £50M strategic investments.
- Developed methodologies for assessing infrastructure criticality and investment priority.
Project Manager - Business Development
Scottish Water Horizons
April 2015 - May 2018
- Project managed the UK's first sewage heat recovery installation at Borders College, coordinating the college, technology provider, Operations and regulatory stakeholders.
- Introduced telemetry-linked temperature monitoring to test and resolve operational concerns about downstream wastewater treatment.
- Identified further heat-from-wastewater opportunities, engaged customers and industry bodies, hosted demonstrator visits and wrote Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme funding bids.
Water Balance Planner - Leakage Planning
Scottish Water
May 2014 - April 2015
- Managed national water balance and leakage reporting, ensuring regulatory compliance and data accuracy.
- Analysed system inputs and outputs to drive targeted leakage reduction strategies.
Operational Risk and Service Analyst - Control Centre
Scottish Water
June 2013 - May 2014
- Delivered real-time risk analysis and service impact assessments during operational events.
- Developed risk models and dashboards to support incident response.
Asset Management Planner - Hydraulic Modelling
Scottish Water
April 2012 - June 2013
- Worked in the hydraulic modelling team cataloguing Scottish Water models and improving visibility of available modelling capability.
- Used hydraulic models to support capital intervention planning and diagnose issues across water networks.
Network Analyst - Leakage Delivery
Scottish Water
March 2008 - April 2012
- Monitored and managed more than 100 District Metered Areas serving over 150,000 properties; also managed £1M+ annual metering contracts and coordinated field delivery.
Asset Planner - Leakage Planning
Scottish Water
July 2007 - March 2008
- Developed asset plans and investment cases for leakage infrastructure.
Water Engineer
Timaru District Council, New Zealand
September 2005 - July 2007
- Managed daily water supply operations and hydraulic modelling for the district.
Earlier Career
Scottish Water and RPS Water Services
1998 - 2005
- Progressive roles spanning network analysis, hydraulic modelling, and water infrastructure consultancy.
What I Bring
I work as a translator between operational reality, specialist
research and investment decisions. I frame the question, assemble
the right expertise, create a proportionate test and make the
evidence boundary visible. The aim is not to prove the first idea
right. It is to make the next decision better.
References available on request.