Industrial Advisory Board

As Operations Director at WSP, Joan leads project and commercial services business within WSP delivery consultancy services including:

• Client-side project
• Programme and commercial management
• PMO offering
• Building surveying
• Design leadership risk and asset investment advice in the PPP market.

Working with a variety of clients, within a range of sectors: Transport, property, petrochemical, utilities, energy and industry.

Joan is a member of the Panel of Health and Safety Experts for Institution of Civil Engineers, as well as a fellow of the Institution. An advocate of women in engineering, Joan founded both the award winning Carillion SNOWE Network, (Support Network for Operation Women in Engineering) to support women in engineering roles and the award winning PLEDGE – (Promoting Leadership, Equality Diversity and Gender Equality) for people of all backgrounds in WSP.

Joan represented the construction industry on the “Your Life” national campaign, engaging with representatives from the Cabinet Office, Government and cross-party members as well as the co–sponsors.

This three year campaign involved Joan working with senior officials including the Prime Minister’s Director of National Campaigns.

In 2016, Joan was a finalist in the category of Best Woman in Consultancy for the European Construction and Engineering Awards (WICE).

In 2017, Joan was the Winner of the Global Carillion Group Award for Innovation.

As a graduate civil engineer, Joan is keen to support the next generation of under graduates at the University of Surrey, to be trained to be “future ready” for the new world of engineering and construction.

Liam graduated in July 2019 from the University of Surrey’s MEng Civil Engineering programme with a first and returned to Arcadis Consulting with whom he had a scholarship with and had spent each summer and his placement working for.

Liam has since been working within the Highways Structures sector of the business with a focus on structural design. During his time at the University, Liam accrued a series of awards and upon graduating he was awarded the highly prestigious “Wells Award” for the best overall final result from any of the MEng programmes offered by the Divisions of CCE and MMA. Liam hugely enjoyed his time at the Surrey and is forever grateful for the support and opportunities afforded to him by the academic staff.

Since returning to Arcadis, Liam has led development of a junior staff development group within his business unit and he currently chairs the ICE Thames Valley Graduates, Students and Apprentice Committee which focuses on providing development support to individuals at all levels working towards chartership, including students. Something which Liam has always been passionate about, having been both an Institution of Civil Engineers and Department of Civil Engineering Student Ambassador whilst studying at Surrey.

Peter Douben, PhD is an environment expert with more than 30 years’ experience in research, industry and consultancy services, focussing on the fate and effect of chemicals in the environment.

He is Director and Founder of REACHWise, a consultancy focussed on REACH, CLP and Biocides, supporting a global downstream end user of chemicals with ensuring the chemicals compliance with REACH in the client’s products and development of mitigation strategies. This also covers defining R&D programmes with the focus on chemical aspects of sustainability activities.

In the context of Brexit the company also provides Only Representative services for the UK. It continues to support companies in EU27/EEA but also from elsewhere in the world when they face regulatory issues for their chemicals to the UK and EU.

Before REACHWise, Peter he was Director REACH/Chemicals Policy in Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council, during which he was responsible for the implementation of REACH, and as such he was involved in several REACH Implementation Projects (RIPs). He led the Project Management Groups on the guidance for information requirements on intrinsic properties of substances, and the one on carrying out the chemical safety assessment.

Prior to this he was Head of Environmental Protection in Unilever and served on many industry bodies in Europe and North America.

Colin is a Surrey ‘Civil Engineering with Computing’ MEng graduate with 20 years’ construction industry experience having worked as Contractor on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, and Local Authority Highways, but predominantly as a consultant. As a design consultant he started his career designing buildings, bridges and temporary works.

After a period working in Hong Kong acting as designer’s site representative on numerous post-tensioned segmental concrete bridges as well as managing the team of independent checking engineers responsible for temporary works for the 1km span cable-stayed Stonecutters Bridge, Colin returned to the UK to manage design delivery of major rail schemes including Cannon Street Station Redevelopment, East London Line’s Silwood Grade Separated Junction and London Bridge Station Western Approach Viaducts.

Colin moved into highways 10 years ago managing delivery of large port access infrastructure schemes, notable local authority bypasses schemes such as A142 Ely Southern Bypass, and national major projects.

Colin is now Group Director responsible for Tony Gee’s UK Highway Sector portfolio which includes delivery of Local Authority, private developer and major National Highways infrastructure projects.

Colin is a chartered civil engineer, member and reviewer for the Institution of Civil Engineers, member of the Chartered Institute for Highways and Transportation and has been a member of the University of Surrey Civil Engineering Industrial Advisory Board since 2019.

Chris France is a Visiting Professor in the Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES). He founded the forerunner programme to the PDS back in 1993 and ran the EPSRC’s longest funded EngD programme. He has consulted for a number of universities in running such industry-facing research programmes (including, Imperial, UCL, Cambridge and Bristol) and was one of the EPSRC’s ‘EngD Advocates’ for many years. Chris succeeded Roland Clift as Director of the Centre for Environment and Sustainability and later in his career founded Surrey’s Doctoral College which oversaw the admission, skills training and progress of a population of 1,000 doctoral students and represented the interests of nearly 500 early career researchers. 

Chris believes that the essence of practitioner doctorates is to fulfil two objectives:

1. Train ‘work ready’ graduates in the state of the art (both theory and practice) of their discipline (in this case sustainability)
2. Undertake research that directly benefits the industrial sponsor whilst demonstrating excellent academic outcomes. The Surrey EngD diaspora since 1997 clearly shows this approach to be a success.

The repeat business from sponsors attests to the value that they derive from their participation. As an academic, Chris supported the CES submission to Research Excellence Frameworks on three occasions by citing papers written with EngD researchers and their industrial supervisors.

The value of tight cohorts, tailored training, high intellectual aspirations along with regular monitoring and tensioning, are key to maintaining the effectiveness of these programmes. This approach has given CES/Surrey an enviable niche. It requires active management (as much of supervisors as candidates) to avoid the otherwise inevitable degeneracy into a series of unlinked PhDs based more in the University.

Chris is an established business leader drawing on experience spanning renewable energy, transport, the natural environment, water, regeneration, construction and government policy. In 2019 he co-founded strategy and sustainability consultancy Accelar Limited to help accelerate the clean growth transition.

He has a strong interest in eco-innovation and investment, for example as an advisor to the Green Finance Institute’s Coalition for the Energy Efficiency of Buildings (CEEB), as a member of the EIC’s Sustainable Smart Cities Taskforce and as a member of the Clean Growth Forum for the Enterprise M3 Local Enterprise Partnership. Chris is a Chartered Director and Fellow of the Institute of Directors. His previous roles include leadership positions with Ramboll UK, Temple Group, AEA Technology and the Transport Research Laboratory.

As a member of the Executive Committee for over 7 years and most recently as President, Adrian led the work on SAI Platform’s Vision, Mission and Strategies. Now in the role of Director General, Adrian is driving these strategies and developing the organisation to reach a sustainable future for agriculture on a global scale.

During a career of over 33 years with Mars Incorporated, Adrian has led positive change across various areas and in many roles: most recently as one of the leading architects of the Mars Sustainable in a Generation Plan. He is an experienced public speaker and a highly experienced manager, who takes a value-driven approach to creating a culture, ethos and team that thrive on improvement and empowerment.

Adrian holds a BSc Honours degree from London University in Mathematics and Physics. He is a member of the board of governors for the Dairy Sustainability Framework, the Advisory board for the Quantis Geofootprint Tool, the Advisory Board for the Surrey University Practitioner Doctorate in Sustainability and an Ambassador for the Positive Innovation Club.

Michelle graduated from the MEng Civil Engineering course at the University of Surrey in 2014 and joined WSP as a structural engineer where she had the opportunity to work on a number of high profile projects including the redevelopment of London Bridge Station.

She then joined Merlin Entertainments as a project manager where she led the delivery of many successful theme park attractions, including a first of its kind tiger exhibit with bridges connecting three different enclosures constructed around a water flume attraction.

Michelle is now the Co-Owner and Executive Producer of themed attraction design consultancy Firefly Creations where she is working on the design of experiences for theme parks, water parks and other experiential attractions around the world.

Philip graduated from the University of Surrey in 1988 and is now the UK Group Managing Director for Bachy Soletanche, the world leader in foundations and soil technologies.

Paul is a University of Surrey graduate and is currently the Tunnelling Director for Balfour Beatty. He has more than 40 years’ experience of planning, engineering and managing major projects, specialising in tunnelling. He has worked on the Channel Tunnel, Heathrow Express, Channel Tunnel Rail Link and the Lotschberg and Gotthard tunnels (Switzerland).

Over his career Paul has switched between bidding for new work and delivering projects.

He was project director on A3 Hindhead, Crossrail C510 Whitechapel and Liverpool Street Station Tunnels and Hinkley Marine. He has also led tender teams on projects such as Thames Tideway, London Power Tunnels 2 and HS2 (N1 Contract).

Paul is a past chairman of the British Tunnelling Society and has been a member of the University of Surrey Civil Engineering Industrial Advisory Board for over 10 years.

Darren James was appointed Chief Executive of the Keltbray Group in April 2020. Prior to this, he spent 30 Years at Costain Group PLC starting on their graduate development programme and rising through the ranks to be chief operating officer.

An honours graduate in civil engineering from the University of Surrey, Darren has undertaken further postgraduate executive programmes at Harvard, Wharton and London Business Schools.

A Chartered Civil Engineer, Darren is a fellow of the Institute of Directors, the Institution of Civil Engineers and Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation.

Darren is a non-executive director of the Port of London Authority, a director of the Rail Industry Association, a member of the Rail Supply Group Council and industry champion for the Sustainable Railway pillar of the Governments Rail Sector Deal.

Responsible for leading integration of life cycle thinking and sustainability science development within Unilever and supporting Unilever’s Compass ambitions and implementation across the business. Thirty years of experience working in industry and participated in various multi-stakeholder and expert working groups.

Experienced in environmental reporting and the development and implementation of impact assessment methods in industry and use of scientific data for communication and claims support. Current research areas include integration of planetary boundary thinking and science into decision-making, improving understanding of variability and uncertainty in life cycle assessment and product footprinting.

Skanska, established in 1887, is one of the world’s leading project development and construction groups. Operating around the world in selected markets in Europe and the US, Skanska is listed on the Stockholm stock exchange and headquartered in Sweden’s capital city. Drawing on our Scandinavian heritage, we are green, innovative, and progressive. We bring together people and technology, as part of our objective to make construction a safer and more collaborative industry.

Nick is a practising civil and structural engineer with Perega who are consulting engineers headquartered in Guildford. As well as being an internationally recognised expert witness Nick has been responsible for many interesting buildings. He has a particular interest in repurposing infrastructure as opposed to renewing it.

Nick has a wide range of professional interests having been the international president of the Institution of Structural Engineers, the Chair of the Joint Board of Moderators (which accredits UK and overseas civil engineering degrees and has sat on the Institution of Structural Engineers’ Trustee Board and its Council.

Nick has been a visiting professor at Surrey since 2015 and a member of its industrial advisory board since 2010. He is also a visiting professor at the University of East London. He has lectured widely both in the UK and overseas.

When not working Nick enjoys cycling, squash, walking and travelling.

Lily studied MEng Civil Engineering at Surrey and graduated with first class honours in 2016. Whilst at university, she was a scholarship student on the Institution of Civil Engineers/University of Surrey Scholarship scheme, gaining 18 months of industry experience across a variety of industry sectors, including overseas site visits in the US, UAE and Hong Kong.

After graduating, Lily pursued her interest in the transportation sector, blending design, engineering and project management to deliver innovative solutions for aviation clients and their local communities at London City Airport and Gatwick Airport. In 2019 she joined Transport for London, leading projects upgrading infrastructure and supporting the modernisation of rolling stock to deliver improved safety and reliability, environmental benefits and transformative customer experiences.