Pete has been the EIA Design Manager at SYSTRA since May 2021, having joined the rapidly growing Environmental Services team. He has started a new EIA team in order to develop SYSTRA’s EIA offer.

Pete’s first degree was in ecology at the University of East Anglia. The course had a pronounced environmental chemistry slant and his dissertation was on the bioremediation of phenanthrene-contaminated soil. Thereafter, he spent some time at Norfolk County Council’s Children’s Services Department doing data analysis with some GIS on the side. After that, Pete did a master’s in environmental biogeochemistry with consultancy skills at Newcastle University, before starting at Atkins in the contaminated land team. He gradually moved sideways from this to environmental coordination and EIA, which he later continued at WSP.

In consultancy, Pete has worked on various parts of HS2 including survey coordination on Phase 1 and stakeholder engagement, EIA authoring and borrow pits on Phase 2b. He has also worked on DCO applications for two gas-fired power stations (Wrexham Energy Centre and Meaford Energy Centre), commercial planning applications and many Network Rail schemes. His EIA work has led to an interest in digital EIA, covering not only how findings are presented to the public but also how we can improve the process of assessment, making it more systematic. This will allow clients and stakeholders to see earlier how the assessment is progressing and make the process more open to challenge and course correction.

In between times, Pete has worked in various data analysis roles. He took an interest in improving how management information was presented in order to provide managers with a better overview of changes over time, rather than isolated snapshots.

Over the next few years Pete will be developing SYSTRA’s EIA team and offering so that it can undertake EIAs with efficiency and purpose, producing clear and robust deliverables that focus on the main environmental issues and that the public and stakeholders can easily understand.

Pete has been an IES member and Chartered Scientist since 2011. He chose the IES for their focus on science, which is what underpins all progress towards an improving environment.