A civil engineer has been recruited as a technical director by SLR Consulting’s hydrology and hydrogeology team in Cardiff.
Ian Walton has 30 years’ experience in civil engineering and environmental consultancy gained with Halcrow, Weeks Consulting and latterly Bureau Veritas. He now has responsibility for developing the company’s hydrology services.
During the early part of his career, Walton worked as a public health engineer in the UK and Middle East before spending several years as a tunnelling engineer in East London. He joined Weeks Consulting to develop its civil engineering infrastructure capability, providing highways and drainage advice for residential, commercial and waste management development schemes.
Following the widespread UK flooding in 1998 and 2000, he pursued his interest in hydrology, gaining an MSc in hydrology for environmental management from Imperial College, London. He then went on to develop a dedicated flood risk team that specialised in the use of 2D hydraulic modelling to assess flood risk and develop mitigation and alleviation strategies for a diverse range of projects, including residential, highway, education, commercial and industrial schemes.
Walton has also completed a number of flood alleviations studies for local authorities, drainage boards and the Environment Agency, including the East Peckham Flood Alleviation Scheme that won an Institution of Civil Engineers Award.
Regularly called on to provide expert evidence at planning hearings and inquiries, Walton has been retained by several insurance companies to provide advice to their networks of brokers and underwriters on flood risk issues.
“I am really looking forward to being part of the SLR team and was attracted by the diverse range of clients and business sectors the existing hydrology and flood risk team currently work for,” he said.
