Challenging practice to improve carbon management with the aid of the PAS 2080 standard

David Porter

David Porter is current ICE Senior Vice President. Porter is a trustee of the ICE and, until recently, held the learning society portfolio.

Porter is currently the director of engineering with the Department for Infrastructure (DfI), which is the roads authority for Northern Ireland. He’s the chief highways engineer.

He is also the head of the civil engineering profession with the Northern Ireland civil service.

He’s responsible for the development of the department’s professional and technical staff, engineering policies and standards, and health and safety. He also leads on procurement and the internal consultancy.

Previously, Porter was the chief executive of the Rivers Agency, the flood defence and drainage authority for Northern Ireland. He also held the posts of director of development and director of operations with the agency.

Porter is a past chair of the Northern Ireland region of the ICE. He’s been on the ICE Council three times: two terms as the Northern Ireland representative, and one as a general member.

He has also served on numerous committees and panels:

• He was a member of the Presidential Commission on the ICE Governance (the Orr Review).
• He chaired the member-led review of NOMCO, the Audit Committee, and the Qualifications Panel.
• He has been on the Committee of Management of the ICE Benevolent Fund.

Amongst various distinctions, Porter is a Fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering, was awarded the Poskitt Medal by the ICE Northern Ireland Region in 2017, and the Engineers Ireland President’s Award in 2018.

Maria Manidaki

Maria Manidaki is Mott MacDonald’s global technical lead for net zero. A chartered engineer with more than 18 years’ experience in investment planning and carbon and asset management, she has led several strategic infrastructure decarbonisation projects.

Manidaki has helped water companies and other asset owners in the UK, Australasia, North America and the Middle East to plan and implement decarbonisation solutions.

A member of the Green Construction Board in the UK, she co-wrote HM Treasury’s 2013 Infrastructure Carbon Review and worked on both versions of PAS 2080.

Manidaki is a visiting lecturer on low-carbon infrastructure at Cranfield University and a technical adviser on net zero in several industry forums, including the ICE’s Carbon Project. 

Richard Patterson

Richard Patterson, NEC and procurement specialist at Mott MacDonald, is a chartered civil engineer and ICE Fellow who has been with the firm for 35-plus years.

He was a member of the drafting team for NEC4; the ICE’s working group on procurement, contracts and carbon/net zero; and the team that developed the recently released NEC secondary option, X29. This enables clients to include contractual targets incentivising contractors to provide lower-carbon solutions.

Keen for NEC to be used more widely, Patterson has trained people in its application in countries ranging from Australia and Ethiopia to Peru and the US.

He has contributed to two NEC books and served on the editorial advisory panel of the ICE’s Management, Procurement and Law journal. He is also a frequent contributor to the NEC’s website and newsletter.

Úna Barrett

Úna Barrett has, in her role as construction carbon associate at Felix O’Hare & Co, been working with Queen’s University Belfast in a knowledge-transfer partnership exploring the embodied carbon cost of construction and the contractor’s role in managing emissions. Her research has centred on PAS 2080’s potential as a framework for cross-industry collaboration on carbon reduction – and on the barriers to its uptake.

Barrett is also pursuing a master’s degree in quantity surveying and commercial management, having already achieved an MSc in urban planning and design.

David Deakin

David Deakin is a technical director at AECOM, where he leads on highway air quality and road-user carbon assessment in the UK and Ireland. In recent years he has also worked on the development of digital emissions tools for the transport sector.

Dr David Jackson

Dr David Jackson, associate net zero consultant at WSP, spent the early years of his career as a weather forecaster with the Met Office, which gave him an extensive view of the environmental impacts of climate change. Rather than continue predicting worsening events, he decided to change paths and help mitigate the effects of climate change.

Since completing his PhD on carbon management tools for the built environment at the University of Edinburgh, Jackson has worked at Costain, Sweco UK and WSP on embedding PAS 2080 and carbon management practices in construction projects.

An associate member of the ICE, he is also a chartered environmentalist and member of the Institute of Environmental Measurement and Assessment.