Created by potrace 1.16, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2019

Our People

Our people are the most valuable element of our business. We are committed to providing a safe, healthy and inclusive workplace where our employees can be themselves and achieve their full potential.

Our greatest asset

At WRc, we strive to be established innovation leaders and every innovation is underpinned by technical expertise. Our people are our greatest resource and the most important building block for commercial success. Hence, everything we do is founded on attracting exceptional people and implementing a programme of continuous leadership, professional and commercial development.

Meet our Leadership team

Andy Blackhall

Managing Director

Andy has more than 10 years’ experience working in management roles within the water and environment sector. After joining WRc in 2018 as head of asset management, he was later appointed as commercial director, responsible for the organisation’s strategic growth, and soon saw WRc deliver our strongest trading performance for the past 10 years. During this period, Andy has also worked for HM Government as a water specialist for the Department of International Trade, working across the globe to promote the strengths and capabilities of the UK water sector. 

He is an accomplished senior leader skilled in providing project definition, overall management and project stakeholder liaison; coordinating leading parties, supervising project teams and overseeing implementation. Andy has extensive experience in financial and administrative oversight, reporting monitoring and evaluation of entire programmes of work.

In addition, Andy is a member of the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management and qualified by the Chartered Institute of Leadership Management. He is Chairman of the International Forum for British Water, where he represents the views of the UK supply chain. Andy is also a Non-Executive Director of Waterwise, an NGO committed to encouraging the efficient use of water.

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Shaun Mason

Strategic Programme Director

Shaun has over 35 years' experience in the water and utility sector working for various global companies and consultants. He is highly experienced in programme and project management with expertise in all aspects of infrastructure investment, from strategy and regulation, to operations and delivery.

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Paul Crotty

Director of Finance and Shared Services

Paul is a Chartered Certified accountant (FCCA), with a background in a diverse range of commercial companies. New to the water sector, but bringing experience of cross functional management from other sectors including biotechnology, logistics, pharmaceutical and marketing/experiential activities. Paul has managed functions in standalone UK companies along with those having an international presence or as part of larger groups.

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Dr Kathy Lewin

Director of Waste & Resources

Kathy has over 30 years’ technical consultancy experience specialising in waste characterisation to support resource recovery, waste classification and environmental risk assessment within the circular economy. She is a Chartered Scientist, Chartered Environmentalist, Chartered Resource and Waste Manager and a member of CIWM’s hazardous waste Special Interest Group.

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Glen Mountfort

Director of Technical Consulting

Glen is responsible for all research and consultancy services related to water and wastewater infrastructure. He specialises in leakage management and water resources planning, and has an exceptional level of technical knowledge gained from more than 18 years of industry experience. Glen's skills also span project management, wastewater networks, asset management, geospatial analysis and statistics.

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Dr Austen Buck

Director - Water, Environment and Scientific Services

With over 15 years in the water quality sector, Austen strives to improve water quality by furthering our understanding of water quality challenges and driving forward the implementation of effective water safety planning activities across the water cycle. He directs our Water Science and Risk, Treatment, and Environmental Geoscience and Hydrology Teams.

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Andrew McArthur

Director of Management Consulting

Andrew has over 15 years of experience in business change and transformation. His technical focus is in asset management and asset management system development which extends across the water, transport and energy sectors. Using this multi-sector experience alongside his strong project management capabilities, Andrew has successfully delivered large and complex projects, working collaboratively with clients to share knowledge and deliver added value.

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Nicola Richter

Head of WRc Academy

An experienced programme director, stakeholder engagement specialist and business development lead with a demonstrable track record of achieving success in projects and client relationships across the globe. Nicola draws on her environmental academic background and experience in marketing, communications, contracts and project management to head the successful WRc Academy team who facilitate workshops and training to bring communities together through knowledge sharing and deliver environmental improvement outcomes.

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WRc Academy

Simon Ayley

Business Development Director – Strategic Growth Partnerships

Simon engages WRc knowledge, experience and innovative ideas with stakeholders from multiple sectors, establishing trust based on technical competence, integrity and commercial awareness. He has 25 years experience delivering all aspects of engineering design and construction project lifecycles to the highest of safety standards, and is a past President of the Institution of Gas Engineers & Managers.

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Ciaran Whittall

Head of PMO

Ciaran leads WRc’s Project Management Office and is responsible for developing a community of skilled, professional PMs delivering high-quality work for our clients and partners. He has over 20 years' experience running projects for a wide range of regulated and non-regulated clients, developing pioneering solutions to a range of complex issues.

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Meet some of our experts

Kit Elmes

Director of ESG

Kit works to bring technical experts and strategic thinkers together to provide sustainability services. This includes quantifying business risks, bolstering innovation, and navigating new regulatory environments, as well as carbon accounting and supply chain auditing.

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Mark Kowalski

Technical Director – Strategy & Planning

Mark specialises in the development and use of asset resilience techniques to understand operational and business risks in the water and gas sectors. He consults on projects spanning potable water storage optimisation and CFD modelling to cost and carbon modelling.

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Dr Nabil Hajji

Technical Director

Nabil leads the technical team and laboratory services at WRc's National Centre for Environmental Toxicology (NCET). He has extensive experience researching toxicants including persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, heavy metals and pharmaceutical chemicals.

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Jane Turrell

Technical Director

Jane has extensive experience in waste characterisation, minimisation, recycling, risk, and resource efficiency studies. This informs policy and business decisions for environmental regulators, industrial waste producers, waste management companies and their trade bodies.

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Dr Catherine Isherwood

Technical Director

Catherine's work is in environmental geoscience and hydrology, including impact and risk assessment, for a wide range of infrastructure and development projects in upland and remote areas within the UK and in Europe.

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Prof. Kiran Tota-Maharaj

Technical Director - Water, Wastewater & Environmental Engineering

Kiran is a water, infrastructure and environmental engineering expert with more than 23 years’ academic and infrastructure engineering experience in the Caribbean and the UK. He specialises in the design, development and management of water, stormwater, and wastewater systems, integrating renewable energy within critical water infrastructure. He is also Professor of Water Resources Management and Infrastructure at the Royal Agricultural University, Cirencester and Swindon, UK campuses.

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James Lees

Technical Director – Assurance & Accreditation

James has over 15 years’ experience in the Water and Wastewater Sector specialising in management systems, potable distribution networks (including customer side lead supply pipes, Water Regulations and Water Efficiency). James leads WRc Approved, Testing and Meter Testing alongside Technology & Innovation teams.

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Kevin Poole

Associate Director

Kevin's expertise lies in municipal and industrial water treatment processes, specialising in operational & strategic risk management and substantial multi-site operational management. His work also helps clients to mitigate odour, optimise micropollutant removal solutions and discover opportunities for water reuse and wastewater recycling.

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Peter Henley

Head of Pollution and Flooding Reduction

Wastewater flooding and wastewater pollution specialist Peter has an extensive background in sewer flow surveys, pipeline condition assessment and inspection, and rehabilitation using innovative techniques to determine remaining asset life

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Justine Leadbetter

Head of Demand Management

Justine is heavily involved in projects helping various clients meet their leakage targets and better plan their water resources. She specialises in utilising a number of digitising and geoprocessing techniques (e.g. GIS) for leakage and other environmental projects.

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Margarita Cabrera

Head of Client Insight

Margarita promotes effective sharing of business information about our clients and partners within different communities to support decision making. Up-to-date information is used to support business development and allows WRc to improve our productivity and sustainably grow our business.

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Paul Grabham

Head of Wastewater Infrastructure

Paul has over 20 years’ experience in the water industry, relating to technical delivery of sewerage studies, strategic planning, asset management and the regulatory process. He is also heavily involved in the WRcCSO project. 

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Andy Godley

Principal Consultant

Andy's expertise covers all technologies of flow measurement across clean and wastewater applications. He designs and performs test and evaluation exercises against requirements on meters, and has been closely involved with the EA's MCERTS scheme for water monitoring.

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Dr Leo Carswell

Principal Consultant

Leo's expertise lies in technology and innovation in the water sector, with projects including technology transfer between water and gas sectors. He also delivers guidance on applications and standards, and performs technology testing, approval and certification for our WRc Approved scheme.

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Nick Orman

Principal Consultant

Nick is a C.WEM and C.Eng specialising in sewers: inspection technologies; deterioration mechanisms; collapse analysis; hydraulic modelling; and cost analysis of flooding schemes. He was a major contributor to the SRM Sewer Risk Management website Sewer Renovation Design Guide.

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James Tremlett

Principal Engineer

James has extensive experience working in the water industry, encompassing all aspects of water supply and distribution. He leads WRc's engineers in helping water utilities to analyse network-wide performance and optimise networks using modelling, contributing to leakage reduction.

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Dr Dominic Cook

Head of Business Development

Dominic works within our Technical Services division. His main areas of expertise lie in distribution water quality, discolouration, asset management and pipe condition assessment (including SmartBall®, Sahara® and Pipe Crawler).

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Dr Ehi Idahosa-Taylor

Principal Toxicologist

Ehi is a Principal Toxicologist at the National Centre for Environmental Toxicology (NCET). She has over 20 years’ experience in undertaking research and providing scientific assessments on the health effects of exposures to chemicals. She leads the toxicology team at WRc and specialises in undertaking chemical risk assessments in drinking water. She is a UK and EU registered Toxicologist.

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Pat Boyle

Business Development Lead

Pat leads our Non-Destructive Testing and Inspection services to examine characteristics such as condition, lifespan, corrosion, erosion, and wall thickness of infrastructure assets such as pipelines, tanks, and vessels of various materials and sizes. He also works closely with our team providing leak detection techniques.

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Anthony Bond

Technical Manager

Anthony specialises in advising on, developing, and implementing innovative techniques and solutions for pipeline condition assessmentinspection and leak detection (including Sahara®, SmartBall®, and PipeDiver®), as part of WRc's wider goal to help reduce leakage.

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Jeremy Dudley

Principal Consultant

Jeremy's expertise lies in the modelling of systems, processes and hydraulics at sewage and industrial effluent treatment works. He is the lead developer of WRc's software tools for dynamic wastewater plant modelling (STOAT) and design (Plan-It STOAT), and helped develop WRc's cost and carbon modelling software (TR61) and catchment-scale modelling software (SIMPOL ICM).

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Dr Stewart Davies

Principal Consultant

Stewart is technical lead for our thermal treatment projects and closely involved in the EfW BAT review and the extension of the UK ETS to the sector. He has over 20 years’ academic, consultancy and operational experience in waste.

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Richard McKinlay

Principal Consultant

Richard is a process engineer with over 12 years’ experience in waste and recycling. He specialises in the development and evaluation of separation and recycling processes for a range of materials, including waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), automotive shredder residue (ASR), packaging and construction products. Richard also provides support to brands, retailers and product designers to improve product recyclability and circularity.

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