Committee

Tara-Leigh McVey

Tara-Leigh McVey is a chartered water and environmental manager, scientist and environmentalist. She’s been involved in coastal engineering and flood management programmes, both in the UK and overseas, for more than 20 years.  
 
In that time, she has worked on the management, technical delivery or facilitation of 100-plus projects, ranging from shoreline management planning and catchment strategy development to river restoration and flood defence construction.
 
McVey was a presenter at Coastal Management 2019, when she discussed a holistic approach to resolving uncertainty and prioritising the delivery of coastal adaptation, resilience and environmental protection on Jersey. She is excited to be back for 2025’s event, this time as chair of its technical committee.

Fiona Barbour

Fiona Barbour is a chartered civil engineer with more than 22 years’ experience, predominantly in the UK water sector, where she started as a hydraulic modeller specialising in urban flooding.

In her current role as business development manager at Mott MacDonald, she is working to expand the firm’s advisory services across Scotland and Ireland, having led its global water resources and flooding practice for five years.

Notable projects that Barbour has led include a review of the Grangemouth flood protection scheme for the Scottish government and an analysis of inland flood risks for Sefton Council, Merseyside, as part of an appraisal of its plan to safeguard the coastal town of Crosby.

She was also technical lead on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s Global Future Cities Programme in Vietnam, which helped to improve Ho Chi Minh City’s flood resilience by creating a database of drainage assets.  

Barbour co-chairs the ICE’s Community Advisory Board on Sustainable, Resilient Infrastructure, advocating for resilience to become an integral design consideration for all engineers, not just specialists in the field.

Heidi Burgess

Dr Heidi Burgess has been working in coastal management, both as a chartered civil engineer and as an academic, for more than 25 years. In that time, she has been involved in projects ranging from traditional hard defences through to beach replenishments and managed realignments.

An expert in nature-based solutions and estuarine hydrological and sediment processes, Burgess seeks to link micro-scale processes with the long-term development of sites on a macro scale. Her work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the interaction of physical and ecological processes.

As a member of the Coastal Management technical committee, she hopes to encourage more academics to attend the conference and develop closer working relationships with industry.

Kevin Burgess

Kevin Burgess has been working in consultancy across a wide range of coastal engineering and shoreline management projects since 1986 in various technical and management roles at Halcrow, CH2M, and now Jacobs. His technical experience covers strategic coastal planning and coastal process analysis, through to detailed design and R&D, contributing to several technical publications. Kevin has been a regular speaker at many national and international conferences, and a member of the organising committee for this conference since 1998, taking on the role of conference chair in 2017.

Nick Cooper

Nick Cooper is an ICE Fellow with more than 30 years’ experience in coastal management. Having worked in academia and at the Environment Agency, as well as for engineering consultancies, he has received scores of industry awards for his work on coastal projects demonstrating excellence in civil engineering and best practice in environmental sustainability.

Cooper has served as an independent member of the Northumbria Regional Flood and Coastal Committee and sat on the editorial panel of the ICE’s Maritime Engineering journal. He has contributed to several national industry guidance documents and published more than 80 papers in conference proceedings and scientific journals.

Miguel Esteban

Miguel Esteban is a professor in the faculty of science and engineering at Waseda University, Tokyo. He received a PhD in coastal engineering from Yokohama National University in 2007 and continued his work in this field with post-doctoral fellowships at Kyoto University and the UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability.

Esteban, who also served as an associate professor at both Waseda and the University of Tokyo, has contributed to more than 150 journal papers on a range of subjects.

Alan Frampton

Alan Frampton is a key member of a service – shared between councils in Dorset and Devon – that’s managing the risks of coastal erosion and flooding. In this role, he leads a team of scientists and engagement specialists to support risk management authorities across the South West, sharing expertise with them, engaging with communities and developing innovative solutions to improve resilience and enhance the environment.

This work has resulted in outputs including shoreline management plans, R&D projects and environmental works supporting the delivery of flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes.

Frampton has been an FCERM specialist for more than 22 years, 18 of which he spent at Halcrow (now Jacobs). His work there included co-writing the Coastal Change Adaptation Planning Guidance for England and contributing to the second edition of the Construction Industry Research and Information Association’s Beach Management Manual.

Carl Green

Carl Green has more than 30 years’ experience in the design, construction and operation of coastal defences, working for consultancies and the Environment Agency before taking up his current role at Wyre Council. He is responsible for the delivery and maintenance of coastal schemes in the district and leads the council’s emergency-response team.  

Having already delivered more than £120m-worth of projects for the borough, Green is implementing a £52m beach and dune management programme. He is also leading a flood and coast innovation project.

An ICE member and a royal engineering officer in the Army Reserve, Green chairs the North West and North Wales Coastal Group.

Greg Guthrie

Gregor Guthrie has been working in coastal engineering and management for 46 years. Initially involved in fields such as coastal measurement, defence inspection and geomorphological research, he later broadened his practice to cover the full gamut of integrated coastal management.

Having contributed significantly to the development and production of several of the UK’s initial shoreline management plans, Guthrie continues to help refine the delivery of shoreline management. While this work has explored many long-term strategic matters, it’s based strongly on his practical experience of dealing with issues and engaging with affected communities at a local level.

Jonathan Hird

Jonathan Hird has more than 20 years’ experience in coastal engineering, flood risk reduction, multidisciplinary planning and ecosystem restoration in the Gulf states of the US. He has worked with a broad spectrum of clients in that time, including NGOs and local, state and federal agencies.

A registered professional engineer in Louisiana, Hird is principal in charge of Moffatt & Nichol’s offices in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Mobile. He holds a degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia and a master’s in civil engineering from Louisiana State University.

Jim Hutchison

Jim Hutchison is an ICE Fellow with more than 35 years’ experience in flood and coastal erosion risk management. Having worked for consulting engineers and held senior roles at Defra and the Environment Agency, he serves as Balfour Beatty’s business lead across the resilience and adaptation sector.

Hutchison, who also sits on the organising committee of the ICE’s Coasts, Marine Structures and Breakwaters conference, is an Environment Agency appointee on the Trent Regional Flood and Coastal Committee.

His other memberships include those of Brunel University’s industry advisory panel, the Association of Drainage Authorities’ advisory group and a northern European network of engineering experts known as the Kring.

Richard Nunn

Richard Nunn has been working in the water and flood risk management sector for 40 years. Nearly 20 of these have been with the Environment Agency, where he initially served as operations manager for project delivery across the broad range of fluvial and coastal schemes in its capital programme.

More recently, he’s chaired the agency’s large project review group, which provides technical assurance for all major flood risk management projects and supports Defra in any submissions to the Cabinet Office.

Nunn has also served on the organising committees of previous Breakwaters and Coastal Management conferences held by the ICE in France and the UK.

Alex Schofield

A chartered civil engineer, Alex Schofield has been part of the coastal engineering community for more than two decades.  

She started her career in consultancy, mainly delivering coastal flood and erosion risk management projects for local authorities and the Environment Agency.

In 2020 Schofield joined Van Oord as a pre-contract manager, leading its acquisition of dredging and marine construction projects in the UK and Ireland. She is also the firm’s marine and coastal framework manager, with oversight of its work for the Environment Agency.