Director and aquatic ecologist at Trex Ecology, supporting a wide range of clients with habitat and species-based survey. I focus mainly on native fish species, pearl mussel and other river invertebrates, and beaver and provide services for planning/EIA, operational monitoring, river restoration and fish passage, conservation and research.

From June 2014 to April 2019 I supported the River Forth Fisheries Trust/Forth Rivers Trust in delivering several design programmes for barrier mitigation and river restoration, authored the Forth Catchment Management plan and latterly managed the delivery of consultancy services on behalf of the Trust.

At cbec I was responsible for managing projects across the UK, coordinating the day-to-day operation of those projects, overseeing the project team and undertaking reviews of output. I was also responsible for attracting new projects and clients, working in coordination with cbec’s ongoing marketing and business development strategy.Although predominantly a management role, a key component is the application of my expertise in river ecology and morphology to writing tenders and proposals, leading fieldwork, undertaking data analyses and interpretation and producing finalised outputs.

At APEM my technical specialties included salmonid ecology, river morphology and ecological statistics. I worked on a diverse range of projects; from investigating potential ecological impacts of urban, infrastructural and energy development, to research into the relationship between habitat and salmonid populations and trialing indicators of water resource pressure on Scottish rivers. I was also tasked with the development of APEMs morphology walkover and undertook a number of river rehabilitation/restoration options appraisals and designs. As a senior scientist, my role included project management, marketing and client liaison and I worked closely with groups from the public, private and charity sectors.

As part of a work package to ecologically underpin a novel hydromorphology assessment I was part of a team refining the new method and researching linkages between physical river processes/modifications and biota.

As research support to the NIEA water management I gained experience working in fields of benthic macroinvertebrate ecology and ecohydromorphology. The driver for the various phases was predominantly WFD, and I gained invaluable experience in assessing recently developed biological monitoring "tools" and developing new ones.