Inspiring Engineering Excellence 2023

Julie Bregulla

Julie is chief technical officer at the British Board of Agrément (BBA), which she joined in 2023. She oversees the quality and assurance teams, supporting the BBA in driving industry safety and quality through providing services that help clients by enabling innovation, identifying risk and demonstrating fitness-for-purpose. Julie has previously worked at TEDI-London (the Engineering and Design Institute London) and BRE (the Building Research Establishment). She is also a former ICE Trustee. 

Dr Helen Balmforth

Dr Helen Balmforth is the head of Data Analytics at the Health and Safety Executive and leads the team providing Data and Spatial Analysis expertise across HSE and wider to support the UK Government and private sector. Helen has over eighteen years’ experience of developing and delivering analytical solutions and applications for a range of health and safety issues. This includes risk assessment methodology development, demographic analysis, including the development of the National Population Database (NPD) and also the development of Regulatory Intelligence models to help target and prioritise interventions.

Helen is the programme director for Discovering Safety, a large programme funded by the Lloyds Register Foundation, which aims to improve health and safety performance on a global scale using data and analytical techniques to provide new insight and solutions. Helen also attends the cross-Government Data Leaders Network and sits on the steering group for the Geospatial Commission NUAR programme.

Steven Naylor BSc MSc

Steven is a research scientist within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the national regulator of health and safety for Great Britain, working within its Science and Research Centre, and a technical lead on the HSE’s Discovering Safety Research Programme. He’s part of a team of scientists who deliver projects for the HSE, government departments and for industry, both in the UK and internationally. Steven’s main areas of research interests centre around the use of data analytic techniques to generate intelligence from datasets to support better health and safety decision-making. Central to this is how organisations can bring together the right data and leverage the knowledge contained to enable a more preventative form of health and safety to be practised.

Steven is passionate about realising the potential for AI and emerging industrial technologies, such as industrial safetytech, to help address the world's most complex problems, in a safe and ethical manner, for the benefit of all.

Tim Chapman

Tim is recognised as a pioneer of change in infrastructure.

Joining Arup in 1987 as a geotechnical engineer he led design on many landmark buildings, overturning regulatory constraints to innovate whilst editing the ICE Manual of Geotechnical Engineering. Leading engineering on major global infrastructure schemes in the 2000s, including Crossrail, led to him chairing the committee which guided the industry on carbon reduction and ultimately his co-authoring of PAS2080:2016, the sole global standard for whole-life carbon management in infrastructure.

Tim continues to provide advice to Government on establishing better ways of delivering projects, including the Infrastructure & Projects Authority’s Value Toolkit. He helps government and clients to deliver successful projects, which achieve wider social value.

David Hirst

David Hirst is an energy and risk consultant, and the founder and managing director of Ainsty Risk Consulting and Northern Powerhouse Energy. He has over 25 years’ experience in the energy sector, working across risk management, energy markets, and system resilience for a wide range of organisations in the UK and Europe.

He is also a director of Outlook Energy, a speculative intraday trader of 24x7 electricity across European markets, where he supports the Board on governance, risk, and the practical application of energy market regulations.

David is a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Policy and External Affairs Committee and serves on the ICE Yorkshire and Humber Regional Committee. He is also the chair of the ICE York and North Yorkshire branch, having previously chaired both the ICE regional advisory board and the ICE management panel risk group.

He also serves as chair of the Audit and Risk Committee for the Resilience Multi Academy Trust, was the Yorkshire and Humber member of the ICE Council (2019–2025) and is the ICE Trustee of the Hazards Forum.

Oana Sala

Oana is a principal consultant within Expedition Engineering's Infrastructure Performance team, where she works on providing engineering-led strategic advisory projects for improving productivity and decarbonisation in major infrastructure organisations. With over 6 years' experience in the railway sector, her current work spans across a wider range of infrastructure sectors, including railway, highways, nuclear, and water.

She currently serves as ICE Council member and as honorary secretary on the ICE London Executive Board. She previously led the ICE London Early Careers Network, where she actively promoted effective mentorship, knowledge sharing, and emphasised the value of early career engagement in driving the change needed in the industry. She also serves as an executive director on the Get it Right Initiative (GIRI), an initiative tackling error in construction.

Laura Doughty

Laura Doughty is the head of culture, engagement and sustainability within Sellafield Ltd’s Major Projects Client team. She has over 25 years' experience in designing, building and leading multi-agency teams to achieve results from strategy, inception and planning through to infrastructure delivery and operations. Her performance history reflects her approach to stakeholder engagement and ability to foster robust relationships with multiple parties.

Laura is supporting Sellafield Ltd to foster the environment needed to realise the benefits of the 20-year multi-billion PPP model that will deliver a series of complex major projects as part of a 100-year decommissioning programme. She leads the team focusing on enabling the success of the model through behaviours, relationships and engagement as well as driving sustainability outcomes, including social value.

Prior to joining Sellafield, Laura assisted HS2 Ltd with their unprecedented engagement programme, through the development and delivery of a Community Engagement Strategy and internal framework for their top 100 stakeholders.

Previously she established and led a pan-Government office for the $107 billion (AUD) 20-year South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan and Program, which included advising the Cabinet Infrastructure Committee and Infrastructure CEO’s Committee.

Colin Pilbeam

Dr Colin Pilbeam is professor of organisational safety in the Centre for Safety and Accident Investigation at Cranfield University. He works with leading organisations in different sectors to investigate safety culture, safety leadership and safety learning. He has recently completed a project funded by the Lloyds Register Foundation, UK, investigating how context influences the effectiveness of safety interventions. His current research project addresses ‘Learning from failures’ and is funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Richard Roff

Richard is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers working as Costain’s Group process safety director. Based in the Northeast of England, he advises the group and its clients on the strategic implementation of process safety management across all sectors and service lines but with particular focus on contracts with catastrophic incident potential. He leads for the group on incident investigation and is also involved in auditing, defining company guidance and education in process safety and leadership.

Since May 2015, Richard has also been Chair of the UK PSM Competence Programme Board which originated in the National Skills Academy – Process Industries.

In mid-2021, Richard joined the technical advisory committee of the Hazards Forum where he chairs the interest group on Engineered Systems Hazards

Richard became a Chartered mechanical engineer having graduated from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and trained with ICI; he is also a professional process safety engineer. He joined Costain in 2013 having worked before then in the petrochemicals, chemicals and steel industries for business of ICI, DuPont, Croda and Tata Steel. In these, Richard held roles in asset integrity, maintenance management, projects management, process safety and organisational consultancy and was also involved in business strategy, business purchases and new business integration. His work has taken him to many countries in Europe, South and South East Asia and to the US.

Joanna Goulding

Jo has a background in Operational Safety, Risk Management, Engineering and 22 years’ experience in the roads sector; with a passion, about safety for everyone using, working or affected by the Strategic Road Network.

Jo’s role is to enable employees and the supply chain that National Highways work with, to apply suitable and sufficient safety risk management, and to help them recognise that whatever their role is in the organisation and wherever they’re based, the decisions they make every day, may have an impact on someone's safety directly or indirectly.

Owning the standard for safety risk management that sets out the requirements people must comply with and also the management arrangements for safety risk Jo provides guidance, support and resources so that innovations and business as usual activities alike can be embraced safely, and everyone can get home safe and well.

Isabel Coman

Named by the Financial Times as one of the 100 most influential women in engineering, Isabel Coman has been director of engineering and asset strategy at TfL since September 2022. An ICE Fellow, she has spent more than two decades in the profession, working on railway infrastructure projects including Crossrail and HS2.

Coman is passionate about encouraging more women into the transport sector and improving its diversity and inclusiveness. She aspires to have a “highly visible leadership presence” with a view to inspiring and empowering a new generation of engineers.

Mark Hansford

With a background in both civil engineering and journalism, Mark Hansford has spent more than 25 years as a specialist in disseminating infrastructure knowledge.

After leaving the University of Birmingham with an MEng in 1997, he began his career as an engineer with AtkinsRéalis, where he conducted water supply and distribution analyses, including an asset condition study covering the 100 largest urban water schemes in Ghana.

In 2000, Hansford joined New Civil Engineer magazine, where he progressed through a series of roles. As editor from 2014 to 2020, he led its relaunch as a monthly title publishing daily digital news.

An ICE Fellow, Hansford then served the institution for nearly six years as its director of engineering knowledge. He now works with several organisations seeking to share knowledge, stimulate discussion and enable action to improve the performance of the UK infrastructure sector.

Chris Gorse

Chris is professor of construction engineering and management at Loughborough University with experience in building and civil engineering. Over the years, Chris has been recognised for his expertise in manging problems that are technically complex and require practical solutions. He has undertaken research and written extensively in the areas of infrastructure, technology and sustainability. The nature of projects that Chris has been involved with is broad but maintains a focus on system performance. To provide some context to this, recent projects cut across topics such as modelling and predicting the performance of renewable energy systems; improving response time of safety systems in nuclear reactors; evaluating building energy performance to the testing and assessing of buildings made from RAAC concrete.

The recent concern over buildings constructed with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete has taken much of the Loughborough RAAC team’s time. Since 2019 the team have been engaging in research – which has fed into most of the national guidance on RAAC. RAAC research at Loughborough is continuing, further exploring models, configurations and monitoring solutions as part of the ‘living with RAAC’ agenda. Chris is also working with Construction Leadership Council’s RAAC Cross-Industry Expert Panel which is both staying abreast of developments and responding to sector concerns. Chris’s multidisciplinary background has established him as an authority on building systems, quality and standardisation and how this impacts on performance and sustainability.

Chris also holds visiting professor positions at the University of Suffolk and Central University of Technology in South Africa. Chris is the founding chair of the International Conference for Sustainable Ecological Engineering Design for Society (SEEDS) and past chair of the Association of Researchers in Construction Management (ARCOM). He recently served on the 2021-2022 (UKRI) Research Excellence Framework 2021 exercise for Sub-Panel 13 Architecture, Built Environment and Planning. He has contributed and led a number of projects for the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Office for Product Safety and Standards and other UK Government offices. Such experience providing a good oversight of the sector ongoing research and challenges.

Cliff Smith

Cliff is an ICE Fellow with more than 40 years’ experience in the construction industry, 38 of which were with contractor Sir Robert McAlpine. Latterly, he has worked as a consultant offering specialist engineering and technical support, project and design management and strategic quality leadership. 

Cliff has been a director of GIRI since its formation in 2017. He was involved in the development of the Guide to Improving Value by Reducing Design Error and several research reports on the use of technology in the construction industry. He leads an agile delivery team covering administration, communications, finance and research.

Paul Johnston

Paul Johnston leads the People function in the Programme & Project Partners; the delivery partnership introduced by Sellafield Ltd to deliver a portfolio of complex projects as part of their overall mission to decommission the site. With over 25 years’ experience in talent acquisition, resource management & people development, Paul helps the PPP partners create successful delivery teams and build long-term capability, with an eye to the social value and skills legacy they can create.

Before joining PPP, Paul spent much of his career working in and around the delivery of engineering & infrastructure projects, helping organisations attract, retain and develop the people capability they need to deliver effectively. He has worked in Oil & Gas, Life Sciences, Civil Nuclear and Defence, and was part of the team that stood up the Dreadnought Alliance, leading the resourcing effort to establish a joint management team to manage the Dreadnought programme – a national undertaking to deliver new submarine capability.

Working on major projects and programmes across the UK, Paul thrives on creating collaborative environments, where teams from multiple different delivery entities can come together to drive the most effective outcomes. He operates at the heart of a rainbow team and recognises the collective strength this can bring to delivery challenges.

Nick Francis

Nick is director of education for the Get It Right Initiative (GIRI). He has extensive experience throughout the construction industry, having worked around the world. He now splits his time between teaching at universities, running education programmes for GIRI and conducting industry consultancy.