Francis is an experienced hydrologist with international experience in the hydrological and water resources engineering sector across Aotearoa New Zealand, Africa, the America's, Asia and Europe. Francis established Smith Hydro in 2021. After years working within larger consultancies in the UK, Canada and in New Zealand, Smith Hydro was founded in order to focus on exciting and innovative water projects across Aotearoa / New Zealand, and the world, without the management, overheads and administration required within a large, corporate entity.

Specialising in the evaluation and interpretation of surface water hydrology and meteorology, to inform and solve environmental engineering issues. This includes application to environmental and social impact assessment, due diligence, expert witness, and scoping, detailed feasibility, and closure studies, in addition to providing support and input to on-going mine water and environmental management solutions.

Primarily involved in hydrological characterization, environmental impact assessment, climate analysis, stormwater management and engineering design to facilitate pre-feasibility and feasibility mining assessments in Europe, South America, West Africa and the Middle East. Includes the use of hydrologic modeling to assess environmental impacts, water supply issues and runoff behavior in addition to detailed hydraulic modeling for flood mapping purposes.Fieldwork to date has been completed in Congo (ROC), Ethiopia, Finland, Ghana, Spain, Senegal and Wales (UK).Key Project Experience to date: • Phosphate Project FS, CONGO (ROC) Detailed hydrological and meteorological characterisation study, feeding into a 2D hydrological model constructed using HEC-HMS ModClark to estimate the timing and magnitude of peak runoff events for engineering design of diversion channels and attenuation dams. This project involved the design of a series of attenuation dams and river diversions, to reduce flood risk to a sequentially advancing, low-lying, open pit phosphate mine.• Gold Project FS, SPAIN Hydrologist responsible for hydrologic modelling of runoff response/impact modelling, catchment analysis, climate data analysis and flow data collection in addition to on-going QA/QC of collected monitoring data.• PFS, GUINEA Hydrologist tasked with extreme rainfall analysis, catchment characterisation and runoff response calculations.• Iron Ore E&S Implementation, SIERRA LEONE Hydrologist involved in the production of on-going water monitoring reports required as part of the environmental permitting process.• Gold Project PFS, SENEGAL Hydrologist for this combined water and geochemistry study. Tasks included climate and hydrological characterisation work, water supply dam assessment and completion of the site wide water balance .

MSc internship within the Geo-Environment - Water Team at SRK Consulting (UK)

BSc student internship - responsible for developing a GIS database utilising ArcHydro Groundwater Aquaveo software within the ESRI ArcGIS platform. In addition completed a study of groundwater - surface water interaction in a wetland environment, using flow accretion profiling to assess the potential impacts of the dewatering strategy in the adjacent quarry. Field work carried out both in the UK and in Finland.