Committee

Tara-Leigh McVey

Tara-Leigh McVey is a chartered water and environmental manager, scientist and environmentalist. She’s been involved in coastal engineering and flood management programmes, both in the UK and overseas, for more than 20 years.  
 
In that time, she has worked on the management, technical delivery or facilitation of 100-plus projects, ranging from shoreline management planning and catchment strategy development to river restoration and flood defence construction.
 
McVey was a presenter at Coastal Management 2019, when she discussed a holistic approach to resolving uncertainty and prioritising the delivery of coastal adaptation, resilience and environmental protection on Jersey. She is excited to be back for 2025’s event, this time as chair of its technical committee.

Fiona Barbour

Fiona Barbour has been working for more than two decades to reduce the impact of climate change through flood risk management, mostly at Mott MacDonald, which she joined in 2011. She is currently supporting the development of Anglian Water’s new reservoir programme.

An ICE Fellow, Barbour has been active in the institution – including chairing its Edinburgh Area Branch – since graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 2002. She became chair of its Flooding Community Advisory Board in 2020 and now co-leads the Resilience Community Forum, representing the ICE at conferences and in interviews with the media, including BBC Radio 4’s PM programme. She is a member of the ICE’s Learning Society Committee and has recently been appointed Scottish regional representative for the ICE Council.

Heidi Burgess

Dr Heidi Burgess has been working in coastal management, both as a chartered civil engineer and as an academic, for more than 25 years. In that time, she has been involved in projects ranging from traditional hard defences through to beach replenishments and managed realignments.

An expert in nature-based solutions and estuarine hydrological and sediment processes, Burgess seeks to link micro-scale processes with the long-term development of sites on a macro scale. Her work is interdisciplinary, focusing on the interaction of physical and ecological processes.

As a member of the Coastal Management technical committee, she hopes to encourage more academics to attend the conference and develop closer working relationships with industry.

Kevin Burgess

Over the past 40 years, Kevin Burgess has worked in consultancy on coastal engineering and shoreline management projects in technical and senior management roles at Halcrow, CH2M and now Jacobs. His technical experience covers strategic coastal planning and coastal process analysis, development and appraisal of sustainable engineering approaches and detailed design.

Burgess has contributed to several technical publications, provided guidance to the industry, from site-specific to national-level assessment, and has been a regular speaker at national and international conferences. He has served as chair of this conference since 2017, having been a member of the organising committee since 1998.

Nick Cooper

Nick Cooper is an ICE Fellow with more than 30 years’ experience in coastal management. Having worked in academia and at the Environment Agency, as well as for engineering consultancies, he has received scores of industry awards for his work on coastal projects demonstrating excellence in civil engineering and best practice in environmental sustainability.

Cooper has served as an independent member of the Northumbria Regional Flood and Coastal Committee and sat on the editorial panel of the ICE’s Maritime Engineering journal. He has contributed to several national industry guidance documents and published more than 80 papers in conference proceedings and scientific journals.

Miguel Esteban

Miguel Esteban is a professor in the faculty of science and engineering at Waseda University, Tokyo. He received a PhD in coastal engineering from Yokohama National University in 2007 and continued his work in this field with post-doctoral fellowships at Kyoto University and the UN University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability.

Esteban, who also served as an associate professor at both Waseda and the University of Tokyo, has contributed to more than 150 journal papers on a range of subjects.

Alan Frampton

Alan Frampton is a key member of a service – shared between councils in Dorset and Devon – that’s managing the risks of coastal erosion and flooding. In this role, he leads a team of scientists and engagement specialists to support risk management authorities across the South West, sharing expertise with them, engaging with communities and developing innovative solutions to improve resilience and enhance the environment.

This work has resulted in outputs including shoreline management plans, R&D projects and environmental works supporting the delivery of flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes.

Frampton has been an FCERM specialist for more than 22 years, 18 of which he spent at Halcrow (now Jacobs). His work there included co-writing the Coastal Change Adaptation Planning Guidance for England and contributing to the second edition of the Construction Industry Research and Information Association’s Beach Management Manual.

Carl Green

Carl Green has more than 30 years’ experience in the design, construction and operation of coastal defences, working for consultancies and the Environment Agency before taking up his current role at Wyre Council. He is responsible for the delivery and maintenance of coastal schemes in the district and leads the council’s emergency-response team.  

Having already delivered more than £120m-worth of projects for the borough, Green is implementing a £52m beach and dune management programme. He is also leading a flood and coast innovation project.

An ICE member and a royal engineering officer in the Army Reserve, Green chairs the North West and North Wales Coastal Group.

Greg Guthrie

Gregor Guthrie has been working in coastal engineering and management for 46 years. Initially involved in fields such as coastal measurement, defence inspection and geomorphological research, he later broadened his practice to cover the full gamut of integrated coastal management.

Having contributed significantly to the development and production of several of the UK’s initial shoreline management plans, Guthrie continues to help refine the delivery of shoreline management. While this work has explored many long-term strategic matters, it’s based strongly on his practical experience of dealing with issues and engaging with affected communities at a local level.

Jonathan Hird

Jonathan Hird has more than 20 years’ experience in coastal engineering, flood risk reduction, multidisciplinary planning and ecosystem restoration in the Gulf states of the US. He has worked with a broad spectrum of clients in that time, including NGOs and local, state and federal agencies.

A registered professional engineer in Louisiana, Hird is principal in charge of Moffatt & Nichol’s offices in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Mobile. He holds a degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia and a master’s in civil engineering from Louisiana State University.

Jim Hutchison

Jim Hutchison is a Chartered Civil Engineer and ICE Fellow with over 35 years’ experience in flood and coastal risk management. He has worked in both the public and private sectors, including senior leadership positions with Defra and the Environment Agency (EA), and has been with Balfour Beatty UK for the past 12 years.

His experience includes coastal planning, asset management, research, flood warning, recovery and resilience, project pipeline and delivery. He has worked closely with communities at risk from unstable coastal cliffs and sea, river and surface-water flooding.  

Hutchison led the original Shoreline Management Plan development in 1994 and is a member of both the ICE’s Coasts, Marine Structures and Breakwaters committee and Coastal Management committee. He is on the advisory boards of Brunel University and the Association of Drainage Authorities, and has just completed 10 years as a coastal advisor on Defra/EA’s Trent Regional Flood and Coastal committee.

Richard Nunn

Richard Nunn is a chartered civil engineer with over 45 years’ experience in the water and flood risk management sector. For two decades he has worked at the Environment Agency, where he initially served as operations manager for project delivery across a ange of fluvial and coastal schemes in its capital programme. More recently, he has chaired the agency’s large project review group, which provides technical assurance for all major flood risk management projects and supports Defra in submissions to the Cabinet Office.

Nunn has served on the organising committees of previous Breakwaters and Coastal Management conferences held by the ICE in the UK and France.

Dr Celso Pinto

With 24 years’ experience in coastal monitoring, protection strategy and erosion risk management, Celso Pinto is responsible for developing and implementing the Portuguese Environment Agency’s coastal monitoring programme.

Pinto supervises several projects for the agency too, including work relating to sediment dynamics.

He also conducts scientific studies in collaboration with universities. His latest research is assessing the performance and longevity of beach nourishment projects.

Alex Schofield

A chartered civil engineer, Alex Schofield has been part of the coastal engineering community for more than two decades.  

She started her career in consultancy, mainly delivering coastal flood and erosion risk management projects for local authorities and the Environment Agency.

In 2020 Schofield joined Van Oord as a pre-contract manager, leading its acquisition of dredging and marine construction projects in the UK and Ireland. She is also the firm’s marine and coastal framework manager, with oversight of its work for the Environment Agency.