First-of-kind delivery
Sewage heat recovery at Borders College
Project managed the UK's first sewage heat recovery installation, coordinating Borders College, the technology provider, Scottish Water Operations and regulatory stakeholders.
Evidence: Temperature monitoring linked to telemetry showed that modest rainfall changed inlet temperature more than the installed system did.
Outcome: The scheme was delivered and received the Green Gown Award for Best Newcomer in 2017 and Scottish Green Energy Award for Best Innovation in 2018.
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Predictive analytics
Rethinking likelihood of failure
Questioned the use of Remaining Service Life as a proxy for pipe failure, researched Random Forest applications in Norway and Canada, and built an initial proof of concept using a synthetic dataset of approximately 30,000 pipes.
Evidence boundary: Synthetic data is cleaner than a real network and failures are sparse. Those limits are part of the research, not footnotes to it.
Current status: Scottish Water's Analytics team is progressing implementation and testing with external expertise. The aim is to identify the most defensible method and the data it needs.
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Strategic influence
A safer alternative at Milngavie
Challenged the assumption that two ageing needle valves required a like-for-like replacement. When the first alternative was rejected, I returned with baseline acoustic monitoring, incremental pressure changes, explicit stop criteria and a reversible plan.
Judgement: The challenge was not something to overcome. It identified the evidence and controls needed for a responsible decision.
Potential, not realised benefit: If testing supports the approach, it could avoid a substantial capital replacement and ongoing attendance costs.
Leadership through change
Keeping a new team useful under constraint
I led a newly formed strategic planning team through organisational change, shifting priorities, resource pressure and a substantial reduction in available investment.
Response: I met people individually, involved the team in resetting priorities and redirected constrained field-investigation capacity into better failure methods and asset approaches.
Learning: Psychological safety and accountability work together. People need room to question, and clarity about what useful progress looks like.
Partnerships and funding
Taking a demonstrator into the market
Built on the Borders College demonstrator by identifying sites and customers, engaging industry bodies, hosting visits and writing bids to the Scottish Government's Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme.
Collaboration: Contributed to opportunities including Stirling Council's district heating network around Stirling sewage treatment works.
Learning: A useful demonstrator is not the end point. It needs partners, ownership and a credible route into operation.
Strategic infrastructure
Planning nationally significant assets
I lead a geographically distributed team of seven planners working across trunk mains, aqueducts, tunnels, subsea pipelines and complex valve infrastructure.
Context: Priorities and funding change. The work is to maintain a defensible line between asset evidence, service risk and investment choices.
Focus: Clearer likelihood and consequence methods, asset-specific approaches and better use of external learning.