Meet the Team

Dr Alan Herbert

MA PhD FGS

Director - Energy Group

Dr Alan Herbert is a hydrogeologist with over 25 years experience of groundwater resource assessment and heat and contaminant transport modelling. Alan has considerable modelling and mathematical expertise applied to ground source energy problems through research and lecturing, where the development of models to address heat transport was a particular interest. Recent work has included support for both regulators and developers in the design of large commercial ground source energy projects in London. He has successfully led projects conducted on all major UK aquifers and dealing with low permeability media.

Andy Singleton

BSc, MSc (Eng)

Technical Director - Land Group

Andy Singleton is an experienced hydrogeologist and project manager/director of 15 years who has worked on a wide range of projects in the UK and abroad, specialising in contaminant and water resource hydrogeology and environmental risk assessment. Andy has a depth of experience in field hydrogeology relating to both water supply and contaminated land investigations. As such he is fully familiar with the design, planning and implementation of site investigation programmes, ranging from the large-scale investigation of residential properties located on former industrial land, to the design and drilling supervision of groundwater abstraction boreholes.

Andrew Abbott

BSc MSc

Assistant Consultant

Andrew gained a Masters degree in Sustainable Water Management from Lancaster University and has experience in quantitative and qualitative report writing. He has been involved in compiling reports for clients at ESI and has gained a good knowledge of data processing and GIS systems.

Andrew Tait

BSc MSc FGS

Project Consultant - Land Group

Andrew Tait has 10 years of experience as a hydrogeologist and project manager with a background in land quality assessment, quarry impact assessment and water resources studies. He has worked on a broad range of projects in both the UK and Ireland with his technical roles including fieldwork and drilling supervision, design and implementation of site investigation programmes, contaminated land risk assessment and groundwater resource assessment. Andy has extensive experience of carrying out hydrogeological impact assessments for quarries through the development of a robust conceptual model and the identification of potential impacts on relevant receptors, for which appropriate mitigation measures are proposed.

Antonio Gennarini

MSc FGS

Senior Consultant - Energy Group

Antonio Gennarini is a qualified applied geologist with a strong background in geology and hydrogeology spanning over 8 years. Antonio has worked on a variety of contaminated land, water resources and ground source energy projects, actively managing many of them. He is actively involved in the development of many conceptual models due to his strength in geology. Major projects include management of low flow projects of behalf of water companies, active roles in conceptualisation and reporting on licence exempt sites for the Environment Agency and other low flow projects including areas classified as Sites of Special Scientific Interest or Special Areas of Conservation. Many of the projects that Antonio has worked on included extensive site investigations, field supervision of open hole drilling, borehole specification and installation, feasibility assessment, regulatory liaison and client management.

Cecilia Young

BA MSc CGeol

Principal Consultant - Water Group

Cecilia Young is an experienced hydrogeologist with a particular focus on water resources. During the 16 years of her professional experience she has worked on projects throughout the whole of the UK carrying out studies in a wide variety of hydrogeological settings. More recently her work has focussed on projects within the Midlands Region primarily for Severn Trent Water Ltd and the Environment Agency. She has a great depth of experience in the assessment of potential impacts of existing water supplies, in particular on low flow catchments, and on SSSI and wetland sites. She has also had considerable involvement in the development of groundwater supplies, including investigative drilling and testing and borehole completion, and is experienced in groundwater modelling. She has been involved in the CAMS assessment process and has experience of the RAM framework. Cecilia also has considerable experience in the landfill sector, and has carried out a number of landfill risk assessments including submission of PPC permit applications, and ongoing permit reviews.

Chris Berryman

BSc (Hons) FGS

Consultant

Chris has provided professional services for quarry and landfill operators across the UK, and has been involved in a wide range of environmental and geoscience projects. He has a detailed understanding of prevailing hydrogeological research themes as well as emerging commercial technologies and regulation. Chris has led field & laboratory investigations and the use of a range of hydrogeological conceptual modeling packages to assess contaminant transport and fate in the subsurface as well as bespoke in-house modeling software and analytical solutions.

Chrystina Bemment

BSc MSc FGS

Project Consultant - Water Group

Chrystina Bemment is a qualified hydrogeologist with a range of experience gained over 11 years. Projects include regional groundwater modelling, low flow investigations, risk assessments, landfill PPC applications, site investigation work, management of complex datasets for input into regional scale groundwater models, preparation and presentation of professional training courses to the environmental industry. Her MSc project investigated the effect of river catchment characteristics on groundwater catchments of river tributaries. This project focused on a specific river catchment which was researched and modelled with MODFLOW; MODPATH was then used to delineate the catchments and to investigate the impacts of catchment variables on the estimated groundwater catchment to different order tributaries of a major river.

Emma Farren

MSci, MSc

Consultant - Water Group

Emma Farren is an MSc qualified hydrogeologist with 4 years of experience in complex groundwater modelling. Emma's work has included supporting Expert Witness projects, a number of regional scale flow models, source protection zone updates and local transport models for the Environment Agency. She is experienced in the accurate estimation of recharge using distributed recharge codes. Emma has also worked on numerous catchment scale low-flow investigations including helping to develop novel approaches for integrating flow and ecological data to derive robust flow targets for streams impacted by Public Water Supply abstraction. Her MSc Thesis at the University of Birmingham was a field- and laboratory-based research project investigating the natural attenuation of chromium via microbial metal reduction in the hyporheic zone.

Grace Chillingworth

BA MSc

Senior Consultant - Land Group

Grace Chillingworth is an experienced hydrogeologist and project manager of 9 years with a background in landfill risk assessment and water resources. She has a range of experience in both hydrogeology and geology, gained through work in the UK and briefly in Australia. The projects she has worked on include a variety of groundwater resource, landfill and contaminated land projects, including numerous hydrogeological risk assessments (HRAs) for landfills and HRA reviews, groundwater modelling and a review of the groundwater quality monitoring network for Environment Agency Wales.

Grace has completed quantitative risk assessments of land historically occupied by industry and project management and supervision of a major site investigation of a contaminated former industrial site. She has managed hydrogeological assessments of proposed quarry extensions involving the review of baseline hydrogeology of the area around the proposed extensions and identifying potential impacts on relevant receptors for which appropriate mitigation measures are proposed if necessary.

Heather Streetly

BA MSc

Project Consultant - Water Group

Heather Streetly is a very experienced hydrogeologist with strong groundwater modelling skills. During the 12 years of her professional experience she has undertaken modelling projects in a wide variety of different geological settings. These include the development of regional models to define wellfield protection zones for the three major wellfields in Oman, the development of a multi-layered model to represent the complex drift aquifer and underlying sandstone at the Drigg Site, Cumbria, and involvement with development of regional groundwater models for the Permo Triassic Sandstone of Bromsgrove, East Shropshire, Lichfield and the West Midlands for the Environment Agency. She made a significant contribution to the development of the conceptual model for the north east Magnesian Limestone for the EA. Heather has become experienced in the use of various methods for calculating recharge and runoff, including the FAO methodology. Heather has developed several detailed groundwater models of the central London area with subsequent heat transport modelling for open loop ground source cooling schemes in the Chalk.

Helen Vonka

BSc MSc MCIWEM

Project Consultant

Helen is a hydrologist with extensive experience in the regulatory industry (Environment Agency) and environmental consultancy. She has worked in water resources planning and water resources hydrogeology in the National Rivers Authority Thames Region, and then returned to the Environment Agency Thames Region to work in the water resource and contaminated land groundwater area after gaining 6 years of consultancy experience in California, USA. Helen has experience in groundwater resource evaluation, hydrogeological characterization, water resource legislation and groundwater modelling.

Dr Janet Riley

BA MSc PhD FGS

Senior Consultant - Water Group

Dr Riley is a mathematical modeller with 20 years experience in the application of quantitative techniques in the assessment of groundwater flow and contaminant transport, including the use of geostatistical and stochastic approaches. Janet has carried out numerous site-specific contaminated land (groundwater and human health) and landfill risk assessments, incorporating water balance studies, flow models and transport models. She has also developed MODFLOW models investigating water resource and aquifer hydraulics issues, including recharge assessment, impact of dewatering and contaminant transport. Janet has particular experience in the development of modelling software, including the conceptualisation of physical, chemical and biological processes, characterisation of fractured and heterogeneous porous media, and the application of robust numerical methods for the solution of the governing flow and transport equations. She has developed code for ESI's site-specific probabilistic groundwater risk assessment software RAM, and written extension packages for MODFLOW and RT3D. She has been involved in development and delivery of material for several of ESI's training courses.

Joe Gomme

BSc MSc CGeol FGS

Principal Consultant - Land Group

Joe Gomme has over 25 years' experience in hydrogeology and water supply. Eleven of these years have been spent overseas, including work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He has in-depth experience with government organisations, with NGOs and in private consultancy. He has set up and managed a range of projects and programmes, both in the UK and in developing countries. Joe has worked on resource investigations in the UK Chalk, Triassic Sandstone and Carboniferous Limestone aquifers, and has undertaken vulnerability assessments of water sources in Chalk, gravel and sandstone aquifers in southern England. He has been responsible for the investigation and remediation of groundwater contamination, particularly by hydrocarbons and pesticides and has more recently specialised in landfill monitoring and risk assessment on both major and minor aquifers. He has extensive field experience of borehole drilling and installation, pump testing and water quality sampling and analysis.

Dr Kim Gray

PhD BSc

Project Consultant - Land Group

Kim Gray has a background in Physics and gained experience developing analytical models describing the transport of water through porous media during her PhD. Experience in programming in Visual Basic and data management skills was obtained in a subsequent research project based in the electronics manufacturing industry. Kim has gained hydrogeological experience related to groundwater modelling and contaminant transport and has been required to develop semi-analytical solutions in C++. She has been responsible for both internal and external projects within ESI, primarily working on systems to interface with mathematical models including ESI's commercial package RAM. Kim developed IGARF1 v4 for analysing the impact of groundwater abstraction on river flow depletion. This involved creating an automated and robust spreadsheet based on VBA coding. The spreadsheet incorporates data input diagrams to clarify model requirements and provides the user with clear explanations at each stage of the model development.

Lisa Murray

BSc

Project Consultant - Land Group

Lisa has 6 years experience working on a diverse range of projects covering; water resource, contaminated land and landfill risk assessments. She has managed site investigation works (i.e. supervision of drilling, environmental sampling and field monitoring and testing); data management and interpretation, including collation of data, database management and summarising results; risk modelling and technical report writing. She supported ESI's "Rapid Site Investigation" initiative which is centred on rapidly assessing potential contaminated land liabilities, principally to assist in land divestment/purchases when time and accuracy is of paramount importance. Lisa has experience in developing conceptual models, and applying these to human health risk and controlled water risk assessments, in quantitative risk assessment software packages, including RAM and the Environment Agency's RTM approach and CLEA models.

Mark Fermor

BSc MSc MBA CGeol EurGeol

Managing Director

Mr Fermor is a hydrogeologist with particular expertise in quantitative methods for resource management, contamination assessment and groundwater modelling. He has practical experience of investigating and remediating a wide range of contamination hazards in soil and groundwater, and in undertaking hydrogeological risk assessments using both qualitative and quantitative methods. He has considerable experience in the simulation of groundwater flow and contaminant transport, and is able to offer a highly focused and practical approach to the use of modelling techniques for the solution of environmental problems including landfill, mine dewatering, river low flow problems, contaminant plume control and remedial design.

Mr Fermor has been responsible for hydrogeological studies involving all major UK aquifers for resource investigations, water supply, contamination assessment and groundwater control. He has experience performing site assessments for evaluating the migration and impacts of landfill gas and leachate, as well as investigation and remediation of LNAPL and DNAPL compounds associated with petroleum and industrial sites. Mr Fermor has provided advice regarding regulatory compliance and water quality legislation and standards for numerous industrial and government clients. He also has extensive experience in providing expert witness services and litigation support and negotiations, and provision of environmental assessments for planning applications and appeals.

Matt Tidy

MSc

Consultant

Matt Tidy is an MSc qualified hydrogeologist with experience in groundwater vulnerability, GIS based interpretation and both water resources and contaminated land field work. Matt graduated from the University of Birmingham MSc in Hydrogeology in 2010. Since joining ESI he has been involved in a wide variety of projects including working on a pumping test analysis for Small Dole landfill site in Sussex, a thermal response test analysis for Sussex healthcare ground source heat scheme and landfill surrender reports on a range of CEMEX sites.

Mike Streetly

BA MSc CGeol

Director - Water Group

Mike Streetly is a very experienced hydrogeologist and project director/manager who is well known throughout the industry for his skills and experience in water resource assessment. He has strong numerical skills which have been applied to solving a wide variety of hydrogeological problems. He also has extensive practical experience, particularly in the design, installation and operation of hydrometric networks and pumping tests. He has made a number of presentations at the Geological Society as well as to the extractive industry and has published papers on a wide variety of topics. He has served as a member of the committee of the Hydrogeological Group of the Geological Society and is currently Associate Editor (Hydrogeology) of the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology.

During the 20+ years of his professional experience Mike has been responsible for water resource studies in all the major UK aquifers including a substantial number of regional groundwater model studies for the Environment Agency as well as more site specific studies for most of the major water companies. He has also had extensive experience of developing a clear understanding of hydrogeological conditions in drift deposits and minor aquifers through his work for the extractive industry. He has been project manager for many hydrogeological impact assessments for the extractive industry including several of the largest limestone quarries in the UK. He has directed projects assessing the risk of groundwater flooding and has acted as an expert witness in matters related to natural mineral waters.

Paul Daily

BSc MSc FGS

Senior Consultant - Water Group

Paul Daily is a qualified hydrogeologist and project manager with over 8 years professional experience. Paul has input on a wide range of water resource projects, including conceptualisation of regional and local scale hydrogeological systems, and developing and implementing numerical groundwater models for both the Environment Agency and water companies. Paul also has extensive field skills and has input to several large field work programmes. Paul has experience in the assessment of abstraction impact on surface waters, and in the planning, undertaking and analysis of field based hydraulic testing. He has recently been heavily involved in the assessment of causes of groundwater flooding and groundwater flood risk. Paul has conducted a number of desk and field based studies into examining the potential of groundwater flooding in a range of hydrogeological/hydrological settings across the UK.

Technical Director - Renewable Energy Group

Paul Ellis is a very experienced hydrogeologist and project manager/director with a wide range of applied experience as well as a period of university based research. He has experience working on British Nuclear Fuels’ Geological Investigation into possible underground nuclear waste storage at Sellafield. Paul also has experience relating to the investigation of hydrogeology and environmental risk assessment relating to water resources, mineral extraction, landfill and other industries. He has in-depth experience of negotiation with government agencies to obtain abstraction licences and discharge consents. Recently Paul has developed specialist knowledge relating to renewable energy and in particular, ground source heating and cooling.

Pete Bemment

BSc Geol, FGS

Consultant - Land Group

Peter Bemment is an experienced geologist with extensive experience working in all fields of the environmental consultancy industry. Starting out as an associate for ESI conducting contaminated land investigations, Peter has had technical input in diverse projects such as groundwater modelling, landfill regulation and low flow studies. Clients have included local authorities, the petroleum and chemical industry, private property owners, landfill operators, the environment agency and water companies. Peter is a qualified first aider, has completed Managing Safely (IOSH approved course) and has a current water hygiene card.

Dr Phil Aldous

BSc, PhD, LLM, DMS, FGS

Director

Phil Aldous formerly Head of Environment and Quality Regulation at Thames Water joined ESI as a Board Director to support the continued growth of the business and to lead the development of the regional, south east office in Reading. Phil is respected in the water industry as an experienced environmental manager, and project director who understands the issues facing water companies and the broader environment. His expertise gained over almost 30 years experience of the UK water Industry covers water resource management, pollution issues and regulatory and compliance management.

Richard Beaumont

MSci MSc

Consultant - Water Group

Richard Beaumont is an MSc qualified hydrogeologist with experience in phase 2 low flow assessments, groundwater vulnerability, GIS based interpretation and water resources field work. Richard graduated with distinction from the University of Birmingham MSc in Hydrogeology in 2010. Since joining ESI he has been involved in a wide variety of projects including secondment to Thames Water to work on Phase 2 low flow assessments, secondment to Severn Trent Water and working on a long term water supply project for United Utilities.

Rob Gordon

BSc

Senior Consultant - Land Group

Rob Gordon is a skilled geologist with over 15 years experience, covering contaminated land risk assessments and nuclear waste disposal safety case development. Rob has played a leading role in a variety of projects, including the 2002 Drigg Post-Closure Safety Case and subsequent projects to support continued operations at the Low Level Waste Repository at Drigg. Rob has also worked on projects involved with environmental monitoring, the assessment of contaminated land and decommissioning on the Sellafield site and also a number of other nuclear power station sites. He has managed and provided technical leadership of a number of contaminated land and landfill risk assessment projects and has extensive experience of geological and hydrogeological investigations including site investigation and data collation, conceptual model development, risk assessment and reporting. Rob has been involved with projects that require the storage and analysis of large quantities of environmental data and has experience of data management and analysis systems in support of such projects.
Rob is ESI's appointed health and safety manger with responsibility for coordinating, implementing and monitoring compliance with the company's health and safety procedures.

Rob Sears

BSc MSc CGeol

Technical Director - Landfill

Rob is experienced in all aspects of hydrogeological assessment, including contaminated land, landfill and water resources. He has a comprehensive knowledge of hydrogeological investigations including site investigation and data collation, conceptual model development, modelling and reporting. Rob has specialised in landfill risk assessment and groundwater detailed quantitative risk assessment and has an extensive track record in completing successful projects for new sites under the Environmental Permitting Regulations (EPR), existing sites converting to EPR and old sites requiring Regulation 15, Part IIA, etc. risk assessments. He is fully conversant with the evolving environmental permitting regulations and is current with the regulatory guidance being produced for this sector.

Rob has been successful in negotiating with clients and regulators to ensure that risk assessments are completed to the satisfaction of all parties. He has also managed and provided technical direction for small and large scale water resource projects and other quantitative and qualitative hydrogeological projects. Rob has worked previously in the radioactive waste industry where he has been responsible for the conceptualisation of hydrogeological models and numerical simulations that have been used in support of authorisations by the Environment Agency.

BSc, MSc

Assistant Consultant

Rosanna has an MSc in Environmental Management and Conservation and has used data analysis techniques to assist on several projects at ESI. These include water quality analysis, low flow assessments and catchment management investigations. She has gained considerable experience in the effective use Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Dr Simon Arthur

BSc MSc PhD

Project Consultant

Dr Arthur is a hydrogeologist with research experience and a first class honours degree in geophysical sciences. Simon has particular interest in groundwater modelling and the quantification of chemical and physical processes in groundwater systems. His research work focused on the integration of chemical equilibrium processes with a finite element solute transport code that has provided considerable experience in model and code development, model verification and validation, in addition to model application. Simon has worked on numerous water resource, contaminated land and ground source energy projects. Groundwater modelling experience includes a review of Thames Region source protection zone and configuration and testing of several regional groundwater models as part of the Environment Agency NGMS application. He has developed groundwater flow and transport models for the radioactive disposal site at Drigg, West Cumbria and conducted saline upconing and intrusion modelling in the Permo-Triassic sandstone aquifer in the North West and the Chalk aquifers in London and on the south coast. Simon has undertaken geological and hydrogeolgical feasibility studies for ground source energy schemes and undertaken modelling of closed and open loop systems, this has included thermal modelling of the long term impact and sustainability of large groundwater cooling schemes beneath London.

Dr Stephen Buss

MA MSc PhD FGS CGeol

Principal Hydrogeologist - Water Group

Dr Buss is a Chartered Geologist, a very experienced hydrogeologist and project manager with wide-ranging expertise in the fields of water resources assessment, groundwater flooding, groundwater chemistry interpretation and modelling, contaminant transport modelling and risk assessment for contaminated land and landfills. Steve has considerable experience of the UK's hydrogeology and has managed and conducted major groundwater resource assessments in the Permo-Triassic Sandstone, Chalk, Magnesian Limestone and Corallian Limestone. These studies included conceptualisation of the groundwater systems, interpretation of groundwater chemistry distributions, computation of water balances and predictive numerical modelling.

Dr Buss leads ESI's groundwater flood risk assessment and mapping projects. Many had a strong R&D focus and have included development of a groundwater emergence mapping tool, and early warning system for the Environment Agency; plus local assessments of flood risk. Dr Buss has contributed to regulatory approaches to the Water Framework Directive, particularly with regard to qualitative aspects of groundwater, having written guidance for England and Wales and for Ireland, on characterising and reporting groundwater chemistry.

Susannah Cheslett

BSc

Project Consultant and Courses and Software Sales Manager

Susannah has become an expert in a wide range of data processing applications and a range of GIS packages. She is an experienced technician with a strong background in data management and figure production. Susannah has managed the reporting process for major contaminated land and remediation projects alongside data processing for hydrogeological studies and application of GIS to data processing and visualisation. Susannah is also the Course and Software Sales Manager delivering on the marketing and sales operation in order to achieve maximum sales and profitability.
Susannah has diversified into the role of Office Manager responsible for the management of resources and staff as to achieve effective and efficient delivery on business support tasks to optimise business operations suitable to achieve the company's objectives.

Tim Taylor

BSc

Project Consultant

Tim has several years of hydrogeological experience both within the regulatory industry (Environment Agency) and private sector. He has worked as a GIS analyst developing flood risk maps and as a geotechnical engineer across East Anglia before joining the Environment Agency Wales where he worked in groundwater & contaminated land and water resources planning. Tim has experience in water company management plans, drought planning and groundwater quality.