ICE Strategy Session: moving beyond strategy: how do we accelerate the implementation of resilience in infrastructure systems?

Savina Carluccio

Savina is the executive director of the International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI) and a fervent advocate of the role of civil engineers in tackling our society’s biggest challenges. She is an experienced civil engineer and infrastructure practitioner with almost two decades of experience advising government, infrastructure owners and operators, multi-lateral development banks and NGOs to develop and implement inclusive, sustainable, and resilient infrastructure that is fit for the future. Prior to taking her role at ICSI, she served as associate director and infrastructure advisor at Arup as well as head of guidance and standards at the Resilience Shift.

David Smith

David is senior vice president, director of strategy, corporate and global, Stantec and co-Chair of ICE Sustainable Resilient Infrastructure Community Advisory Board.

David heads Stantec’s corporate and global strategy. He has over 30 years of utility and infrastructure sector experience and advises on infrastructure strategies using knowledge of trends and best practices from across the world. He holds board director positions within Stantec’s Global, Europe and UK operating companies.

David has completed the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership; he is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program; and a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He co-founded the ICE/Heriot-Watt/Stantec prestige lecture series on resilience and has co-authored recent publications and articles such as ‘Community Futures’ and ‘Beyond Sustainability’. David is also co-chair of the ICE Sustainable, Resilient Infrastructure Community Advisory Board.

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.

Kristen Guida

Kristen has been urban resilience manager at the Greater London Authority since March 2022. Before that, she worked for more than 15 years coordinating partnerships supporting climate change adaptation, as manager of the London Climate Change Partnership, director of Climate South East, and chair of Climate UK.

Her major interest is in bringing together people and ideas from across sectors to respond to social and environmental resilience challenges. In particular, she is interested in the social justice issues raised by climate change and the need to incorporate equity in resilience policy and planning.

Previously, she worked on human rights, as a senior researcher on political rights, civil liberties and press freedom at Freedom House in New York.

Keith Howells

Keith Howells is the 158th President of the ICE.

Having graduated in civil engineering in 1974, Keith joined one of the founder members of the Mott MacDonald Group and spent the first 10 years of his career in infrastructure design and project management, mostly in the water and transport sectors. On completing an MBA in 1986, he became involved with the planning, feasibility, and financial and economic analysis of projects, principally in the water and environmental sectors. Over the next decade he worked on numerous projects funded by the international finance institutions as well as by UK government bodies.

Keith has built career long experience in the planning, study and design of hydraulic structures, hydropower, urban drainage, sewerage, water supply and river engineering schemes. He has worked in numerous countries as well as in the UK. He ran the firm’s Water and Environment business from 1997 to 2002, before becoming the Group Managing Director in 2004, directing the firm’s expansion in North America and Australasia. Keith became Chair of the Group’s Executive Board in 2011, responsible to shareholders for the performance of the company and its strategic direction – a role he continued until mid-2019.

Keith was on the board of the Association for Consultancy and Engineering from 2011 to 2015, and its Chair in 2013; he was a member of the CBI’s Construction Council from 2013 to 2019; and a member of the Cranfield School of Management Advisory Board from 2012 to 2020.  He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Nikki Van Dijk

Nikki is a Technical Director at Mott MacDonald and the group’s discipline lead for climate resilience. She advises organisations about physical risks from climate change and helps them create and deliver adaptation action plans to improve resilience. Her experience spans the infrastructure sector and she has worked with infrastructure owners and operators in the water, rail, highways and aviation sectors, as well as assessing the impact of climate change on critical national infrastructure projects.