ICE Strategy Session: PAS adoption, impact and promotion

David Porter

David Porter is director of engineering with the Department for Infrastructure, which is Northern Ireland’s highways authority. In this role, he is also the chief highways engineer and head of the civil engineering profession in the Northern Ireland civil service.

Porter is 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, he was chief executive of the Rivers Agency, Northern Ireland’s flood defence and drainage authority.

Porter has served on the ICE Council three times, twice as the Northern Ireland representative and once as a general member. He is a trustee who, until recently, held the learning society portfolio. He has also served on several institution committees and panels.

A fellow of the Irish Academy of Engineering, Porter was awarded the Poskitt Medal by ICE Northern Ireland in 2017 and the President’s Award by Engineers Ireland in 2018.

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.

Adrian Johnson

With 30 years of professional experience, Adrian is a chartered civil engineer and executive technical director at Stantec. He’s worked primarily in the water sector, specialising in sustainable development, climate change and carbon management. 

Adrian has supported several water company capital programmes and led numerous consultancy and research commissions on topics ranging from carbon accounting, resource efficiency and renewable energy appraisals, to natural capital assessments and climate change risk and resilience. For example, Adrian implemented a carbon and sustainability strategy for Thames Water capital delivery, including priorities for flood resilience and reporting on climate change adaptation. He also provides consultancy support and training for Scottish Water and several of Stantec’s other water clients in the UK and Ireland on their net zero commitments, developing tools and guidance, embedding carbon and other sustainability criteria into decision-making, as well as helping them assess risks from and make plans to adapt to climate change. 

Adrian is an Honorary Professor at Heriot-Watt University, School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society. He is also a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and Member of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management and the UK Green Construction Board’s Infrastructure Working Group. He co-chairs the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) for PAS 3090 Adaptation Pathways for Infrastructure Systems, and previously chaired the TAP responsible for both the development and subsequent update of PAS 2080 Carbon Management in Buildings and Infrastructure. 

Lewis Barlow

Renowned for his work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on construction projects, Lewis Barlow provides expert advice on whole-life decarbonisation to developers and governments.

With more than 25 years’ experience of managing environmental risk, he is responsible for several internationally recognised advances in tackling the climate crisis.

Barlow and his team won New Civil Engineer’s NCE100 Low Carbon Leader Award two years running for their work to reduce infrastructure assets’ lifetime emissions and share best practice across the sector.

Skilled in applying climate change projections to ensure project resilience, Barlow wrote and presents the ICE’s Carbon Management in Infrastructure course. He was a member of both the steering group and the technical advisory panel for the revised carbon management standard PAS 2080:2023.