East Midlands President’s Visit: We’re on the road to….Melton Mowbray

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.

Ian Nicholson

ICE East Midlands chair Ian Nicholson (MSc, FICE, PIEMA) trained originally as a civil engineer and has worked in the construction industry for over 35 years. He currently works for Stantec as senior sustainability leader.

Ian initially worked in frontline project roles for the first 10 years, but in the early 1990’s he moved to Anglian Water where he focused on business improvement activities, initially with responsibilities for quality assurance but increasingly from the late 1990’s looking at environmental management and sustainable development within the construction industry. 

Since, leaving Anglian Water in 2003 Ian has gathered extensive experience of environmental and sustainability issues within the construction industry as a consultant on topics such as environmental management systems; life cycle assessment techniques; carbon reduction; responsible and ethical sourcing of construction products; and learning and development of sustainability skills.

Mike Barnett

Jason Clarke

Jason is a client director in AECOMs surface transport, aviation and ports with 33 years’ experience in the public and private sector, working on both the trunk road and local authority networks. 

His career includes design, project management, and the delivery of asset maintenance and improvement programmes leading integrated delivery teams.

Jason was AECOM’s framework manager for the Midlands Highway Alliance Plus (MHA+) Professional Services Partnership (PSP) from 2015 to 2023 and is now their framework director under PSP4.