Leading environmental consultancy expands as demand grows

GeoSmart Information, the leading environmental consultancy, has expanded its team, appointing a new director and four staff members, as it puts its ambitious growth plans into place.

Paul Drury joins the business, a UK leader in producing proprietary flood data, as Director of Product Development.

He has more than 20 years’ experience of managing data capture projects and report development, as well as producing flooding and climate change insights. He has also worked in the housing sector and for local government to deliver spatial data driven solutions.

At GeoSmart Information, Paul will support innovation and product development, including the modelling of new environmental datasets and services. He will steer the team of environmental and geographic information systems (GIS) modellers to design and complete new products and will manage research and development projects.

Dr Paul Ellis, Managing Director of Shrewsbury-based GeoSmart Information, said the high-level appointment was in response to increased demand across a raft of its services, including contaminated land reports, sustainable drainage systems (SuDS), and flood risk analysis.

“Business is growing rapidly, which has necessitated the expansion of the team and I’m pleased to have brought in Paul, who has an exceptional professional background and will play a key role as we develop new products for the insurance, land development and property sectors,” he said.

Paul Drury is a regular writer of thought leadership papers and articles for geospatial magazines and has presented at flood risk management and geospatial conferences in the UK, USA, Malaysia and Singapore.

“GeoSmart Information is an ambitious and thriving business that is at an exciting point in its evolution,” he said. “I’m looking forward to leading its research and development arm to bring forward new tools that can help us as we grapple with the effects of climate change.”

His appointment comes just weeks after Phillip Martin was announced as the Managing Director of new division GeoSmart Risk.

The business has also added four new members to the team. Rebecca Conway and Jack Croft join as environmental consultants, while Connor MacNeil has been appointed as graduate drainage engineer. Rosamund Whitehurst has also joined as sales administrator, working with the sales team.

GeoSmart Information, which was established in 2013, has a strong technical base and a successful flood and environmental reports business that is used by commercial enterprises and in millions of domestic conveyances.

In November, it launched FloodSmart Analytics, a product that enables insurers, risk managers and mortgage lenders to accurately assess flood risk at even single building level. It provides high-definition analysis for flood depths, probabilities and the costs of flooding from river, coastal, surface water and groundwater sources, including climate change impacts.

GeoSmart’s data is already relied on by multiple sectors, from millions of home-owners to corporate entities and public sector operators, and the data have supported research by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK’s independent adviser on tackling climate change.