Senior Policy Adviser - Contaminated Land, Scottish Government

Senior Policy Adviser - Contaminated Land, Scottish Government

Development Manager, Buglife

Profile coming soon. 

Director, RSK Geosciences and SiLC

Tom is a Director of RSK Geosciences and has over 25 years’ experience in the assessment and management of land affected by contamination. His diverse and innovative project work has been recognised in several Brownfield Awards, including detailed site characterisation to support remediation and proposed development, major brownfield infrastructure (M74 Completion), advice to Government on stakeholder engagement and risk communication on Buchanan St. Ambrose Schools, and as a co-author of CL:AIRE mine gas guidance. He is a Chartered Chemist and Scientist, SiLC and SQP, and is currently chair of the SiLC Professional & Technical Panel (PTP).

Lead Professional for Economic Regeneration, Fife Council

Ian works within the Council's 'Business and Employability' Service and has a Fife-wide remit focussed particularly on the re-use of vacant and derelict land.  This includes managing the council's allocation of monies from the Scottish Government's 'Vacant and Derelict Land Fund' and working with internal and external partners on securing the remediation and re-use of sites which often present complex ground conditions.

Associate Director, RSK

Helen is an Associate Technical Director & QRA Group Technical Lead at RSK Geosciences. A qualified hydrogeologist, Chartered Geologist and ASoBRA (controlled waters), she has over 20 years’ experience working in environmental consultancy, specialising in land contamination risk assessment (Part IIA and planning) and environmental compliance projects. 

Helen takes pride in developing robust, practical, sustainable and cost-effective solutions to her clients’ environmental problems, including achieving Regulatory approval for projects. She is passionate about raising the standards of land contamination risk assessment in the UK, demonstrated through her involvement in the EPS Land Quality Expert Advisory Group, Scottish Government Contaminated Land Advisory Group, leading the award winning SoBRA Climate Change and Controlled Waters sub-group and presenting at UK land contamination conferences. A career highlight was winning the 2022 Brownfield Award for Best Project Preparatory Work.

Technical Officer, Fife Council

A geologist by training, Donald studied climate change in South America and worked in digital cartography in South India before joining the Contaminated Land Team at Fife Council in 2005.  In addition to progressing strategic inspections and responding to planning consultations, his public health duties now embrace local air quality management, the design of active travel networks and a deep and long standing interest in energy security, particularly shallow mine-water geothermal district heating.

Policy and Practice Lead

Scottish Land Commission

David’s main areas of work are on land, housing and place. His remit at the Scottish Land Commission includes work on land assembly, placemaking, and housing land markets.

David joined the Commission from the SFHA, where he led on new build affordable housing, planning reform, energy efficiency and regeneration. Prior to that he worked for housing associations and for Edinburgh City Council on housing and regeneration.

He is a board member of Rural Housing Scotland and was previously on the board of PAS, the planning and place charity, and a community based housing association in Greenock.

Researcher & Data Anaylst

Scottish Land Commission

Hanna leads on the Commission’s delivery of high quality evidence and analysis by designing, conducting, and commissioning research on land reform. She previously worked as a senior researcher on land and housing for the New Economics Foundation.

Principal Geoscientist, British Geological Survey

Darren Beriro is a principal geoscientist at British Geological Survey, specialising in research on brownfield land redevelopment. Darren has 18 years of work experience on a wide range of projects including the development of new laboratory methods to measure the dermal bioavailability of organic contaminants in soils and the award-winning GIS-based Brownfield Ground Risk Calculator. 

Darren has most recently been working with the Environment Agency researching background concentrations of PFAS in soils and the Remediation and Sustainable Growth Tool. 

President and Principal Scientist, Cox-Colvin & Associates

Mr. Cox provides lectures and poster presentations at numerous regional and international conferences on the topics of groundwater contaminant migration and remediation, source area evaluations, and the assessment of vapor intrusion migration pathways.  He is the inventor of the Vapor Pin® Sampling Device used worldwide, and is the primary architect of a variety of environmental database applications, including Data InspectorTM. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Geology and Mineralogy from The Ohio State University and a Professional Degree in Hydrogeology from the Colorado School of Mines. Mr. Cox is a founding member and sits on the board of the Association of Vapor Intrusion Professionals (AVIP).

Senior Associate Director, Land Quality, Jacobs

Yolande Macklin is a Senior Associate Director at Jacobs with 20 years’ experience in land contamination management and assessment. Yolande has previously worked within multidisciplinary consultancies, local and national government organisations. Yolande has a wealth of experience in ground investigation and assessment on a wide range of sites including gas works, chemical works and former landfills. 

Since joining Jacobs in 2021, Yolande has been working with the Environment Agency on projects such as PFAS Risk Screening and the Remediation and Sustainable Growth Tool. 

Contaminated Land Officer

Inverclyde Council

Profile coming soon.

Senior Remediation Consultant, Geosyntec Consultants & RSK

Andrew Morgan is an experienced contaminated land professional with over 20 years’ experience in the assessment, management and remediation of contaminated land within the UK and Europe. He is a Chartered Geologist and also holds the professional title European Geologist by the European Federation of Geologists.  Andrew has significant experience in all aspects of site conceptualisation, environmental assessment and remediation engineering including remediation options appraisal, feasibility testing, along with detailed full scale design, installation and verification evaluation. He is also a guest lecturer on the Cardiff University MSc. Applied Environment Geology Course.

Technical and Quality Director

DETS part of Normec

Dr Ken Scally is an International Environmental Forensic Chemist with over 29 years of experience in petroleum hydrocarbon analysis and forensic data interpretation, analytical chemistry, and quality management.

He acted as the Forensic Chemistry expert for the damage assessment program on the Gulf of Mexico, Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill; the largest accidental marine oil spill in history and the largest National Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) in US history.

He specialises in chemical composition and interpretation of petroleum hydrocarbons in terrestrial and marine environments and has a detailed understanding of oil chemistry, degradation pathways, ageing, and source correlation indicators.

Senior Business Consultant, SEPA

Hannah joined SEPA in 2019 as a Graduate Trainee, having graduated with an MSc in Chemical Engineering, centering her dissertation on novel technologies to capture carbon dioxide. Hannah provided support to the Leven Programme throughout her second year as a trainee and knew she didn’t want it to end. Now the Leven Programme Manager, Hannah works alongside invaluable partners to continue to develop strategies and projects which deliver outcomes for people and place. During her time at university Hannah worked in TK Maxx, which was where she learned to be calm amongst the chaos

Associate Technical Director, RSK Geosciences

Neil is a Chartered Scientist who has 20 years’ experience in the environmental sector for both regulatory and private sector organisations. He is an experienced land contamination risk assessor with practical experience in fieldwork, laboratory analysis, regulatory function, project management and environmental consultancy. He has extensive Quantitative Risk Assessment experience in both human health and water environment disciplines, with particular interest in VOC and asbestos in soils human health risk assessment. Neil recently joined RSK as Associate Technical Director, having worked in consultancy since 2012. Prior to his consultancy experience, Neil worked for West Lothian Council as Contaminated Land Officer.

Senior Programme Manager, Green Action Trust

Kate joined Green Action Trust in October 2023 after 11 years with the RSPB led Inner Forth Futures/Inner Forth Landscape Initiative partnership in central Scotland. As GAT’s Senior Programme Manager she leads the organisation’s work across the Leven catchment, working with Leven Programme partners, GAT colleagues, external consultants and funders to develop and deliver environmental, heritage and community themed projects on the ground across Levenmouth, Fife.

Landscape Architect, Iglu Studio

Stuart is a chartered landscape architect with Iglu Studio. He has worked on a wide variety of design projects across Europe over the past 10 years, from regional scale research and design to hands-on construction. His practice is based on facilitating interactions with communities to shape the creation of meaningful public spaces and landscapes which can adapt to our changing climate.

He is also the co-founder of GRAFT, an award-winning Scottish-French landscape architecture collective based in Edinburgh and Paris. GRAFT’s work considers how ecological and cultural relationships influence the making of landscapes to create holistic and multi-layered interventions.

Associate Dean & Programme Leader Waste & Resource Management

University of the West of Scotland 

With 8 years environmental policy experience, Ian graduated from the University of the West of Scotland with a PhD in environmental geochemistry in 2012. He is currently a Lecturer in Environmental Chemistry at UWS with a focus on land contamination, air pollution and ecosystem services.

In previous roles Ian was responsible for the growth of Environmental Protection Scotland. During his time with EPS Ian worked closely with key stakeholders through establishing Expert Advisory, and produced consultation responses, guidance and policy documents on behalf of the membership. Since August 2015 Ian has been a Trustee on the EPS Board.

Urban Designer, Iglu Studio

Paul is a creative landscape and urban design professional with over 35 years’ experience in private practice, and over 22 years in education and the voluntary sector. Paul has extensive experience in delivering projects from large scale masterplanning to detailed design and implementation both in overseas and domestic markets. His key skills include masterplanning, residential and mixed-use developments, urban design led development strategies, and landscape assessments.​

Paul is Director of Iglu Studio, a chartered member of the Landscape Institute, a Recognised Practitioner with the Urban Design Group, and an Academician with the Academy of Urbanism, including AoU’s Scottish Advisory Group.

Principal Hydrogeologist – Water Resources Unit,

Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)

Isla Smail is a Principal Hydrogeologist in SEPA’s Water Resources Unit. Her work area at SEPA focuses on contaminant fate and transport in groundwater. She provides technical support to SEPA regulation in a wide range of areas, including groundwater policy, landfills and waste management, pollution incidents, land contamination, and waste crime. Isla works in partnership with various regulatory, industry and academic organisations on issues relating to groundwater contamination and is currently the SEPA representative on JAGAG. Isla is a Chartered Geologist with over 20 years’ experience as a hydrogeologist. She has worked in both environmental regulation and consultancy, both in the UK and overseas.

Operations Director

Groundsure

Stuart has worked in the environmental sector for 30 years. Feeling frustrated at the lack of data related innovation in the consultancy market at the time, Stuart joined Groundsure in 2003. As Groundsure’s Operations Director, the role allows Stuart to apply his data quality first ethos.