Our Speakers
Claudio Albano, Jacobs
Claudio is Senior Project Director for Jacobs Environmental Solutions in Europe. He is recognised as a leader in Sustainable Remediation practice. He has launched SuRF Italy, has been chairing international conferences and active in global initiatives (ISRA, NICOLE).
Paul Bardos, r3 Environmental Technology Ltd
Paul has more than 20 years of experience in soil science and biology, contaminated land and brownfields, waste treatment and risk management, particularly biological treatment technologies, sustainability assessment, soil and water issues. He is managing director of r3, a QP under the DOW-COP initiative and co-chair of the Steering Group of the Sustainable Remediation Forum in the UK.
Tom Butterworth, WSP
Tom leads the work on Biodiversity Net Gain for WSP, supporting a wide range for organisations to meeting their BNG objectives. He was one of the authors of the UK’s industry BNG guide and has over 20 years’ experience working for wildlife. Over this time, Tom has led practical management of SSSIs, developed local, regional and national biodiversity strategies and policies, led programmes of research and managed the delivery of the Government’s biodiversity strategy.
James Cartwright, GeoStream UK
As Technical Director at McAuliffe Environmental and its specialist remediation arm, Geostream UK, James leads all the two companies’ contaminated land remediation projects in the South of England. His 25-year career has seen him direct numerous large-scale in situ and ex situ groundwater projects in the UK and across the globe. This includes some of the UK’s biggest in situ soil vapour extraction, bioremediation, product recovery and ex situ thermal projects. A Chartered Engineer, James is a member of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management and is a DoWCoP Qualified Person.
Richard Clayton, WSP
Richard is the UK lead for WSP’s Ground and Water business, a team of 150 delivering contaminated land management, remediation, hydrogeology, site decommissioning and demolition. He has been with WSP for almost 22 years and has over 25 years’ experience in the characterisation and remediation of contaminated land. Richard was actively involved in the Sustainable Remediation movement and has recently supported the development of the RemSoc Practitioners Framework for Remediation.
Marc Dillen,Grondbank
Marc Dillen has a Master’s Degree in Economics. Subsequently he obtained a Master of Business Administration at the University of Louvain. He started his career as a researcher at KU Leuven (the Catholic University of Leuven) and afterwards he worked as an advisor at the Belgian prime minister’s office. Nowadays he is director general of the Flemish Construction Confederation.
The Flemish Construction Confederation is the leading business organisation, recognised employers' organisation and representative body of the construction industry in Flanders. It represents and defends the interests of some 10,000 member companies of all sizes, from small enterprises to global players, carrying out all forms of building and civil engineering activities.
Besides civil engineering and general contracting, Flemish companies developed an international activity in environmental engineering: water treatment, decontamination of soils, waste disposal, renewable energy, etc.
He is also director general and co-founder of Grondbank and Tracimat. Grondbank, a non-profit association, has been working since 2002 to support all stakeholders involved in earthworks. In addition to its traditional tasks, such as issuing soil management reports, Grondbank delivers solutions to practical earthworks problems. Tracimat is a construction and demolition waste management organisation that certifies the selective demolition process and uses an elaborate traceability system to check what is happening with waste that is generated during demolition works. With the Tracimat system we are able to establish which (hazardous) materials are used in buildings and in infrastructure and which materials will be released during the demolition works. All this information is gathered in the Tracimat database, a tool that allows us to collect interesting facts and figures on demolition waste in Flanders.
Steve Edgar, Vertase FLI
Managing Director of Vertase FLI and FLI-QDS, Steve oversees all aspects of both of the FLI Group Remediation businesses. He initially cut his teeth as a geologist for a consultancy working on a variety of remediation projects in the nineties during the founding years of the remediation industry. Since then he has spent most of his career in remediation contracting, designing and implementing in situ and ex situ remediation projects sites ranging in size and complexity from petrol forecourts to tar and chemical processing plants.
George Evans, Soilfix
George is founder and Managing Director of Soilfix, one of the UK’s leading remediation contractors. He has over 25 years experience in the design, implementation and verification of remediation works for divestment, redevelopment and regulatory drivers. He has led the design and build teams for remediation of a wide range of sites including former and current chemical works, landfills, manufacturing facilities, power stations, gas works and fuel sites.
Mark Fitzsimons, University of Plymouth
Mark Fitzsimons is a chartered chemist with extensive experience in the study of nitrogen and its environmental cycling and impact. He has studied and evaluated nitrogen behaviour in both marine and terrestrial environments and brings this expertise and experience to the FABSOIL project, on which he is Principal Investigator.
Jeff Gamlin, Jacobs
Jeff is Principal Technologist and remediation subject matter expert. He leads Jacobs subgrade biogeochemical reactor technology function and is leading a number of research projects to understand how metagenomics data can be used to better engineer sustainable and effective bioremediation processes. He has also supported international PFAS site characterisation projects and is involved in research with academic partners to evaluate thermal and biological degradation pathways for PFAS.
Liz Gray, Atkins
Liz is a Principal Consultant with Atkins and has worked with industry over the last 15 years to improve resource efficiency in construction. She has applied the DoWCoP to sites large and small and is particularly interested in its application to major infrastructure and multi-phase projects. She is a trainer for CL:AIRE delivering the DoWCoP training courses and sat on the original steering group that developed version 1 of the DoWCoP.
Liz has co-authored the IEMA guidance on the assessment of materials and waste in Environmental Impact Assessment and is an advocate of bringing excavated materials into the spotlight during the planning phase of a project to maximise reuse and sustainability benefits.
Tim Grossey, RSK
Tim is director for geophysics with RSK Environment Ltd. A chartered geologist with 15 years commercial experience Tim’s expertise lies in near surface geophysical surveys. Tim sits on the committee of the Near Surface Geophysics Group (NSGG), a special interest group of the Geological Society.
David Holmes, Ecologia
David joined Ecologia in 2014 and has been involved in a number of technically demanding projects, ranging from chemical oxidation on a former chemical works to large-scale LNAPL recovery in a geologically complex tidal site. He manages Ecologia’s R&D efforts and has investigated pore-transport processes in support of site verification, developed a field-based oxidant-monitoring protocol, and notably won the 2017 Best Scientific Advance Brownfield Briefing Award for Ecologia’s LNAPL probe. He has also been a member of NICOLE’s emerging contaminants working group, and most recently completed research into the photocatalytic oxidation of PFAS compounds in groundwater with the University of Greenwich.
Kevin Leahy, ERM
Kevin is a technical director at ERM and a chartered geologist, specialising in contaminant fate and transport in complex geology, especially fractured bedrock and the use of environmental sequence stratigraphy.
Gareth Leonard, Regenesis
Gareth is the Managing Director of REGENESIS in Europe. He leads a dedicated team of in situ remediation specialists to provide solutions for the contaminated land industry. Gareth has over 18 years contaminated land experience, having provided successful remediation designs and implementation for over a thousand projects across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
Giacomo Maini, Ecologia
Giacomo initiated the formation of Ecologia Environmental Solutions Ltd in the UK in 2000, with the view of providing technical expertise and consultancy to companies operating in the contaminated land market. Over the years Ecologia has undergone significant expansion, opening UK offices in the Midlands, South West and set up a subsidiary company in Italy. The company has also increased the range of services offered by developing an in-house geotechnical capability. Giacomo’s role as Managing Director of Ecologia is to provide strategic guidance to the ongoing activities of the company and client liaison, but he also retains a very active role in several commercial and R&D projects. Giacomo is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and a Chartered Scientist.
Rick Parkman, AECOM
Rick leads the Remediation and Industrials Practices for AECOM Environment in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He is also on the steering group and lead representative for AECOM at the Network for Industrially Coordinated Sustainable Land Management in Europe (NICOLE) which is a leading forum promoting co-operation between industry, academia and service providers on the development and application of sustainable technologies in contaminated land management, risk assessment and remediation.
Ian Ross, Arcadis
Ian is a Senior Technical Director and Global, In Situ Remediation Technical Lead / Global PFAS Lead at Arcadis. He has experience with multiple physical, chemical and biological treatment technologies and has won several national and international remediation awards for designing their application. His focus for the last 5 years has been solely on PFASs, following initial experience with PFOS in 2005 as a result of the Buncefield fire. He was part of the team authoring and reviewing the CONCAWE PFAS guidance document and has published several articles on PFAS analysis, site investigation and remediation, including a recent book entitled “Emerging Contaminants Handbook".
Jonathan Smith, Shell Global Solutions
Jonathan is the Soil & Groundwater Technology Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Shell Global Solutions, based in The Hague, and a Visiting Professor of Contaminant Hydrogeology at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has 25 years soil and groundwater experience in regulation and policy (Environment Agency), academia (Sheffield University) and industry (Shell), and has worked in the UK, USA and The Netherlands.
Alan Thomas, ERM
Alan is a technical fellow in ERM. He has over 25 years’ experience managing contaminated land and is still enthusiastic about new technologies and implementing new approaches. Alan is a strong advocate of sustainable remediation and is a member of the SuRF UK steering group.
Gary Wealthall, Geosyntec
Gary is the Managing Director of Geosyntec’s consulting business in the UK and Ireland. He is a Senior Principal with more than 25 years of experience in contaminant hydrogeology research and practice. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto and was previously a Principal Research Scientist with the British Geological Survey and Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield.
Gary specialises in the development and application of high-resolution site characterisation methodologies for the selection, design and implementation of advanced remediation technologies. He serves as a Subject Matter Expert for industry clients in Europe, North America, South America and South Africa. Gary is an Editorial board member of QJEGH and Member of CL:AIREs Technology and Research Group (TRG).
Martin Westwood, Jacobs
Martin is a geo-chemist with over 20 years of consultancy experience. He has extensive experience in undertaking and managing environmental risk assessments, geo-environmental site investigations and hydrological / hydrogeological characterisation. He has acted as designer and/or contract supervisor on a range of remediation schemes to facilitate development including waste storage sites, landfills, former industrial and military sites with impacted soils and groundwater. He is a Chartered Member of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (IES) and a Member of the Society of Brownfield Risk Assessment (SOBRA).
Nicholas Willenbrock, CL:AIRE
Nicholas is joint manager of CL:AIRE where he manages the development of the Definition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice (DoW CoP). His background is in Geology and Environmental Management working previously as both a consultant and contractor.
Jim Wragg, Geosyntec
Jim is a Senior Principal Hydrogeologist with more than 30 years of experience focused on the detailed investigation, assessment and remediation of contaminated soil and groundwater, working primarily with site owners from the industrial sector. Jim has direct, recent experience in corrective action programme design and implementation, including regulatory negotiation. These projects have included a broad range of established and emerging technologies and techniques selected to match the remedial goals and site circumstances. He frequently employs high resolution investigation technologies, bench and pilot scale treatment tests to deliver bespoke remedy designs.
