Andrew Fellows

Principal Geo-Environmental Consultant, RSK Environment 

Andrew Fellows is a Chartered Scientist and Environmentalist with over 14 years’ experience in the land contamination sector. He specialises in risk assessment and is an accredited SoBRA risk assessor and recently qualified as a Specialist In Land Condition (SiLC). At RSK Andrew acts as technical lead for ground gas and vapour intrusion disciplines. He supports the wider business with technical support, report reviews, internal procedures, training, and guidance. Andrew works with the SoBRA ground gas subgroup to help develop new guidance on estimating ground gas generation and emission flux.

Sarah Hamill

Contaminated Land Officer, West Dunbartonshire Council

Sarah graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Topographic Science from Glasgow University in 1996, and started her career as a Hydrographic Surveyor in the offshore industry. Sarah then returned to university, gaining a Masters in Environmental Studies from Strathclyde University in 2002. Sarah has since been involved in contaminated land management for both the private and public sectors with experience being gained in a variety of different projects ranging from small scale desk studies/investigations to large scale residential/commercial developments and remediation projects. Sarah was appointed as the Contaminated Land Officer for West Dunbartonshire Council in 2006. During this time Sarah has managed to progress the Council’s Contaminated Land Strategy through the investigation of a number of potential Part IIA sites and has subsequently overseen the successful remediation of a number of these. More recently Sarah’s main duties have been in relation to many of the large scale regeneration projects within the authority including the Former Carless Oil Refinery (only dual regulated Part IIA/special site in Scotland), EXXON Bowling Site and the Queens Quay regeneration project in Clydebank.

Sarah currently represents the Central/West Authorities on CLAG (Contaminated Land Action Group). She also attends the EPS Land Quality Advisory Group and was part of the steering group who produced the recently published EPS Land Contamination and Development Guide.

Nicola Harries

Technical Director, CL:AIRE

Nicola Harries is a chartered geologist and scientist and has over 30 years’ experience within the environmental industry. She is a technical director at CL:AIRE and has responsibility for managing a number of industry initiatives. Nicola co-ordinates the National Brownfield Forum, the National Quality Mark Scheme for Land Affected by Contamination, Sustainable Remediation Forum UK (SuRF-UK) and SuRF - International.

Nicola has developed recently a series of different training courses on working with asbestos in soil in line with CAR-SOIL and Verification of Gas Protection Systems. In January 2018, CL:AIRE was awarded the project management of the Phase 2 of Category Four Screening Level Project, which she is leading.  More recently, she has been working closely with a cross industry working group to develop an accreditation scheme for gas verifiers. 

Seamus Lefroy-Brooks

Principal, LBHGEO Ground Engineering

Seamus is multi-chartered as a Civil Engineer, Geologist and Environmentalist.  He is a SILC and has worked as a land contamination expert for some 40 years and holds the highest grade of professional registration as a Ground Engineering Adviser under the RoGEP scheme.

Seamus is notably one of the authors of the present British Standard 8485:2015+A1:2019 - Code of Practice for the Design of Protective Measures for Methane and Carbon Dioxide Ground Gases for New Buildings. He is past chair of both the AGS (Association of Geotechnical & Geoenvironmental Specialists) and the Land Forum / National Brownfield Forum. Seamus was one of the founders of The Society of Brownfield Risk Assessment (SoBRA). 

He was named by DEFRA for assisting with the Environmental Protection Act Part 2A statutory revisions and was one of the twelve experts subsequently appointed to assist local authorities in the government’s National Expert Panel for Land Contamination. Seamus is also chair of the CL:AIRE Technology & Research Group, which oversees all CL:AIRE projects and programmes including the DoWCoP and GVPS schemes.

Since 2014 Seamus has been leading the initiative to deliver the National Quality Mark Scheme (NQMS) for the management of land affected by contamination.  He was honoured to have been invited to tender for overseeing the Environment Agency-led investigations into possible land contamination caused by the Grenfell Fire. 

Seamus has been significantly involved in the recent initiatives in relation to asbestos in soils.  He is a member of the Joint Industry Working Group (JIWG) on Asbestos in Soils and served on the Working Group (WG2) of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) Committee for Fibre Measurement (CFM).  He is acknowledged by the HSE for his work assisting with their recently updated HSG248 guidance.

Hugh Mallett

Technical Director, Buro Happold

Hugh is a Chartered Geologist and registered SiLC with over 40 years professional experience including 25 years on contaminated land. He spent the first ten years carrying out geological and geotechnical investigations and assessments followed by four years advising on minerals planning at the DoE. He has provided expert witness evidence, written best practice guidance, delivered training and is a guest lecturer at several Universities. He is currently chair of the AGS Loss Prevention Group and am a member of the SiLC PTP.

Neil Salvidge

Independent Assessor, NS Training, Development & Assessment

Neil has been active in construction since leaving school, opting to follow a career in carpentry. Opportunities then took him overseas to Africa and Australia working in supervisory roles and gaining his initial interest in training.

On returning to the UK, a further opportunity in ground gas protection came about which linked up with the development of the NVQ, which Neil has assessed for the past 12 years. He remains passionate about construction, sharing knowledge and developing skills, especially in our niche sector which is very often overlooked or mis-represented.

Dean Wigley

Group Engineering Manager, Persimmon Homes

Dean has worked in the house building sector for just over 30 years, this has included various roles and disciplines. His career has always had an engineering bias, including earthworks, remediation, construction and consultancy roles.

He is currently Group Engineering Manager at Persimmon Homes and has been so for the last 18 months. Dean is mainly involved in establishing standards and implementing policy for various disciplines, including a recent mandatory guidance policy for the installation and verification of Gas Membranes. Persimmon Homes are CL:AIRE principal members.

Steve Wilson

Technical Director, Environmental Protection Group

Steve is a Chartered Engineer and Environmentalist with 30 years professional experience of geotechnical and environmental engineering. Steve has helped to shape much of the UK guidance on ground gas assessment and remediation.  He is widely recognised as a leading expert in ground gas and provides advice and designs for remediation schemes on sites around the world.  He has successfully applied quantitative risk assessment to ground gas for both development and Part IIA sites over 20 years.  He is co-author of the Local Authority Guide to Ground Gas and was a member of the drafting committee for British Standard BS8576 on ground gas investigation.  He was also a member of the research team for a recently completed CIRIA project on the verification and integrity testing of gas protection systems.

Steve also presents training courses on ground gas for the Chartered Institution of Environmental Health and CIRIA.

Dominic Young, Specialist Contaminated Land Officer, Renfrewshire Council

Dominic has over 15 years experience serving both private and public sector organisations within the brownfield regeneration sector. He is a Chartered Environmentalist and holds Registered Risk Assessor status (RSoBRA) for Human Health / Controlled Waters / Vapour Intrusion and Permanent Gases. He also sits on the SoBRA Ground Gases sub-group, the Institution of Environmental Sciences Land Condition Steering Group and Environmental Protection Scotland Land Quality Expert Advisory Group.