Profile

I started my professional career as a technician with a company at 16 and they gave me a year out with experience  and then sponsored me through Uni before offering me a job. I wanted to be a civil engineer but this work took me into the highways side of civil engineering. I worked hard to pass my chartership within three years of graduating.

I now work for myself as a self-employed consultant and also tutor on the Open University engineering degree and also assess NVQ’s for Leeds College of Building. I also wrote a new transport planning technician qualification in 2016 which is a national qualification, the first of its kind, being run by the college.

I like going mountain biking and running with my boys as well as lots of swimming in preparation for taking up triathlons this coming year.

I am a transport planning and engineering consultant with over 20 years experience in this area having experience of promotion,  planning and design of highway works for new developments, motorway schemes, signing, traffic signals and a lot of other areas that transport engineers are involved in.

I have mainly worked in design consultany with a small amount of time on construction sites, but I work with many other disciplinary.

When the government and local authorities decide on a strategy of development like retail, housing, offices etc etc this planning of land use has a huge impact on development and so it is essential that we try to deal with this transport impact. As transport planners and engineers we help to model the impact of the development and to try and reduce the impact by promoting sites that help people choose sustainable modes of transport. This is a really interesting area of engineering – How will people travel in the future?

Generally in my consultancy work I will be working on a few projects requiring transport assessments for planning permission. These might be housing, schools and recently new casinos, hotels etc in Europe.

I could be writing the report for this or I could be researching the evidence for this or creating models with which to test the impact of the predicted traffic on the local highway network.

Often I will need to go visit an area or site that I am looking at to get a very good idea of  what is around the site. Often I do this by cycling if it a wider area and test out all the cycle infrastructure that is around.

I spend a lot of time working collaboratively with Architects, planners, solicitors, economists, surveyors…….all just part of the multi-disciplinary team that is needed to bring a site forward through planning and then to be built on site. So communication is very important!