ICE Autumn Prestige lecture: James Forrest 2023

Prof. Anusha Shah

Anusha Shah is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and its president for the 2023-24 session. She’s the third woman and first person of colour to be elected as president in over 200 years of ICE history.

She’s a senior director for resilient cities and UK climate change adaptation lead at Arcadis, a global sustainability, design, engineering and management consulting firm.

She’s also a non-executive director at the Met Office, a trustee at the Green Alliance and a visiting professor at Edinburgh University. She was awarded honorary professorship by the University of Wolverhampton for knowledge transfer and an honorary doctorate of engineering by the University of East London for her services to address climate change.

Anusha specialises in water and environmental engineering and has over 22 years of experience in designing, managing and leading projects and programmes in the UK and internationally.

Anusha sits on various industry climate change groups. She represents Arcadis at the London Climate Change Partnership and the 50L Home Initiative of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. She’s a past chair of the Thames Estuary Partnership Board.

Anusha is the recipient of several awards, including the 2020 Top 50 UK Women Engineers Sustainability Award and the CECA Inspiring Change Award. She was recognised by Climate Reframe as one of the UK’s leading Black, Asian and minority ethnic voices on climate change.

Benjamin Delmond

Benjamin Delmond is a civil engineer working for Jacobs, with a diverse career in the water industry. Initially focusing on drainage design, he worked on prominent projects such as the MetroLink and BusConnects.

Since then, he has been working on Europe's largest coastal erosion initiative and devising strategic plans for Irish Water.

Actively involved with the ICE, he previously held the position of President Future Leader and now chairs the ECNet in Ireland, organising events and educational sessions for early careers engineers.

Benjamin's research in sustainable pollution removal recently earned him the Pollution Mitigation of the Year Award.

Dr Nick Mills

Nick and the team are delivering an ambitious plan based on partnership approaches to significantly reduce the use of storm overflows through catchment-based solutions. The innovative approach is being demonstrated at scale in six pathfinder catchments over the next two years across south-east England.

Nick is an engineer with a strong background in delivering complex and innovative programmes. He has delivered several large-scale demonstrations of new technology and concepts. He was head of innovation at Thames Water for four years. He is a chartered engineer with the Institute of Engineering and Technology, has an engineering doctorate and was awarded an industrial fellowship from the Royal Commission of 1851 for his work.

Jo Bradley

Jo Bradley has worked on many aspects of water management during her 30-year career in the UK. She completed 28 years at the Environment Agency, where she focused on a range of pollution prevention topics, but in the past decade her attention has been on pollution from urban surfaces and roads. She worked for SDS Limited for four years, specifying stormwater treatment devices in SuDS schemes. In September 2020 she became director of operations for Stormwater Shepherds UK, where she is dedicated to the pursuit of better stormwater management and the development of a funding mechanism to deliver that management.

Elliot Gill

Elliot Gill works with utilities, regulators and governments, advising on the management of urban flooding and pollution. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has worked for research and consultancy organisations and now holds the post of market sector lead for urban drainage at Stantec in the UK and Ireland.

Elliot authored the Storm Overflows Evidence Project for the government’s storm overflows task force, providing a first-of-its-kind assessment of the costs and benefits of different storm overflow control policies. This work has informed the proposed near-£60bn, 25-year programme of wastewater improvements in England. He has also advised the Welsh government on its policy options and works with a number of water companies throughout the UK to help them plan for and implement storm overflow improvement programmes.

Elliot is a fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and a chartered water and environmental manager.

Jo Parker

Jo Parker is a chartered civil engineer who works as an independent consultant, having worked in the water industry for more than 40 years. She has held senior roles with UK water companies up to director level and has also worked in a range of other countries as varied as Afghanistan and Australia.

Jo was awarded an MBE in 1994 for services to the water industry. She is chair of the ICE’s Water and Sanitation Community Advisory Board, vice-president for engineering at the Institute of Water, and a fellow of the International Water Association. She was voted one of the UK’s top 50 women engineers in 2020 by the Women’s Engineering Society.