The Team

Who We Are

The West Somerset Lagoon scheme is being developed by West Somerset Lagoon Ltd, a company that was formed to develop the West Somerset Lagoon Tidal Range scheme. There are 5 Directors who between them provide extensive professional experience in the engineering, environmental and architectural aspects of large energy and marine schemes including Tidal Power schemes.

Chris Binnie

Chris Binnie is a Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of The Institution of Civil Engineering (ICE) and also a Fellow and former President of The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM). He has had a long involvement in Tidal Power. He was on the Management Board of the Severn Tidal Power Group (STPG) and chaired the DECC Independent Engineering and Technical Expert Panel. He lives in West Somerset and knows the West Somerset Lagoon site well. He leads the Environment aspects of the scheme.

Chris Binnie has had a career of over 60 years in civil engineering. He was a main board director of WSAtkins plc including floating it. He was a founder chairman of Tidal Engineering and Environmental Services Ltd and then founder chairman West Somerset Lagoon Ltd. Chris has about 20 years of experience working on tidal range power projects. Chris has a first-class honours degree from Cambridge University as well as a degree in law. His post graduate studies were at Imperial College London where he studied soil mechanics, dam design, and hydro power. During his career he has worked for client organisations, NCB, (coal, and ports.) contractors Wimpey, (storage tanks) and Roberts Construction ( 100m Cabora Bassa dam) and consultants Binnie & Partners (1,500MW Dinorwig pumped storage scheme, and 5 new reservoirs,) and WSAtkins where he was the director of the water division and then Main Board Director. For about 25 years he was an All Reservoirs Panel Engineer under the Reservoirs Act. The dam designs for which he was responsible include Marchlyn 70m, Gargar dam and 6MW power station 70m Algeria, Ain Zada dam in Algeria 55m, Yuvecik dam in Turkey 110m. He was President of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in its centenary year and was also on the board of the Association of Consulting Engineers, the British Consultants Bureau, and the Foundation for Water Research. He is an Emeritus Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was from 2010 to 2025 a Visiting Professor at Exeter University lecturing in dam design. He was Chairman of the Thames Tideway Feasibility Studies 2000-2005 resulting in the successful £4bn Thames Tideway Tunnel. Chris has given Public Inquiry and Select Committee evidence about a dozen times. Chris’s key experience in tidal renewable energy is summarised below: •Management Board: of the Severn Tidal Power Group studies for the Shoots Barrage and the Severn Barrage 1982-1984 •Chairman: DECC Independent Engineering and Technical Expert Panel for the Severn Tidal Power Feasibility Studies 2007-10 •Member: Peel Mersey Tidal Power Design Advisory Group 2010-11 •Consultant: Hafren Power Severn Tidal Power Barrage 2013-15 •Consultant: Wyre tidal power project 2014. •Consultant: Morecambe Bay tidal power project 2015-16 •Consultant: ITP providing technical support to Hendry Review of tidal lagoons (2016) •Member: Mersey Tidal Power Design Advisory Group 2018-19 •Founder Chairman of Tidal Engineering and Environmental Services Ltd 2018. •Consultant on tidal power scheme north of Avonmouth 2022. •Aberthaw tidal power scheme, 200 MW 2021

David Kerr

David Kerr is a Fellow of The Institution of Civil Engineering (ICE). David has had a career of over 50 years in civil engineering which included 25 years with Sir Robert McAlpine where he was Chief Design Engineer for 8 years prior to retirement. He has also had a long involvement in Tidal Power. Whilst with McAlpine he led the civil engineering studies for the Severn Tidal Power Group. Since retirement from McAlpine, he has worked on tidal power, offshore wind power and other marine renewable energy projects. He leads the Engineering aspects of the scheme.

David Kerr has had a career of 60 years in Civil Engineering, working initially for consultant WS Atkins followed by 25 years for contractor Sir Robert McAlpine. For his final 8 years with McAlpine, he was Chief Design Engineer for the company and lead the in-house consultancy of 50 staff. Since then, he has provided Engineering Consultancy and pursued a professional interest in Energy. David is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He has authored various papers for professional journals and also acted as reviewer. He is now a Director of West Somerset Lagoon Ltd., responsible for the engineering, cost estimating and construction planning aspects of the project. His experience of Tidal Power started in the 1980’s when he led the civil engineering studies for the Severn Tidal Power Group, a consortium of 6 contractors. The scope of work included a major marine site investigation including geophysical survey and boreholes, dredging and foundation studies, barrage alignment, layout and cost optimisation, caisson design and installation studies, cost estimates and construction programme for this 8GW project. Subsequently he worked on studies for tidal power on the River Thames, the river Wyre and the Duddon estuary in Cumbria. More recently he was Civil Engineering Lead Engineer for Parsons Brinkerhoff (now part of WSP) for the DECC study in 2008-9: This was an update and extension to the earlier STPG studies, including two alternative barrage schemes and two lagoon schemes and updated cost estimates. In addition to working on Tidal Power, his career experience has included: oDesign of Thermal and Nuclear power stations. These included both coal and gas fired power stations and a nuclear power station in South Korea. oDesign Manager for large multi-discipline projects: Croydon Tramlink in South London and for a microchip plant in NE England. oDesign of offshore concrete structures for oil and gas in the North Sea, Canada and the Arctic. This included concrete platforms in the North Sea, a floating production, oil storage and offloading concrete vessel to be moored to the west of the Shetland Islands and structures for ice conditions in the Arctic. •Windpower on land: Development of onland windfarms in the UK and in the USA in the 1980’s. •Windpower Offshore: Engineering Manager for investigation and correction of foundation defects on a 54 turbine windfarm. This included remote structural monitoring and fatigue analysis, detailed design of new structural supports, design of a cathodic protection system, support to the offshore installation team, and subsequent recertification of the foundations by DNV. •Development work for Tidal Stream structures and designs of two prototypes. •Development work for Wavepower, including a study of structural aspects and costing for around 20 different wave power concepts and design of prototypes.

Roger Falconer

Roger Falconer is Emeritus Professor at Cardiff University, a Fellow of the: Royal Academy of Engineering, Chinese Academy of Engineering (Foreign Member), Learned Society of Wales, Institution of Civil Engineers and Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management. He specialises in tidal power and environmental impact assessment modelling for tidal range projects and has published extensively in the field. He continues to serve on advisory panels for several lagoon and barrage schemes, and was a member of the DECC Independent Expert Panel. He leads the Energy and Modelling aspects of the scheme.

Roger is: Emeritus Professor of Water & Environmental Engineering (Professor 1997-18), Cardiff University (Roger Falconer Cardiff University), Independent Water Consultant (Roger Falconer | Water Consultancy), and previously Director, Dragon River & Tidal Ltd. (2017-23). He has over 40 years’ experience leading large teams in applied research and development projects in hydro-environmental modelling (both computational and laboratory based tidal energy studies) in 3 universities he regularly participates in media and TV interviews on tidal energy, flooding, coastal erosion, and water quality. His computational model DIVAST has been acquired by over 40 companies and regulatory authorities for hydro-environmental modelling studies world-wide and he advised on over 100 Hydro-Environmental Impact Assessment studies world-wide Roger is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. He is also a Fellow of the: Institution of Civil Engineers, Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, and American Society of Civil Engineers. He was President of the International Association for Hydo-Environmental Engineering and Research (IAHR, 2011-15) and has received many awards for his research, including: IAHR Ippen Award (1992), RAEng Silver Medal (1998), HonFIAHR (2017), HonDEng University of Bradford (2022), Chinese Friendship Award (2022) etc. His key experience in tidal renewable energy related projects is summarised below: •Member: Government’s Expert Panel for Severn Tidal Power Feasibility Studies (2008-10) •Member: Mersey Tidal Power Design Advisory Group (2010-11) •Member: Expert Panel Corlan Hafren (2010-12) •Member: Regional Board, Hafren Power Ltd. (2012-15) •Consultant: ITP - providing technical support to Henry Review of Tidal Lagoons (2016) •Director: Dragon River & Tidal Ltd. (2017-23) - responsible for developing novel tidal turbine, now being developed further by Jacobs Engineering •Member: Welsh Government Hinkley Point C Stakeholder Reference Group (2020-date) •Consultant: Liverpool City Region, Mersey Tidal Power Project (2020-date) •Director: West Somerset Lagoon Ltd. (2021-date) - involved in developing a tidal lagoon •Chair Professor: Yangtze Institute for Conservation & Development, China (2019-date) •Consultant: to companies and government agencies in UK and internationally, reporting on over 100 hydro-environmental and tidal energy projects, including: Severn, Mersey, Humber estuaries etc. (UK); and DID Malaysia, DSD Hong Kong, Tijuana Estuary, USA etc. •Expert Witness: Public Inquiries, Arbitrations, Court Cases in UK and internationally Further details about Roger can be found here: Roger Falconer | LinkedIn, Roger Falconer | Wikipedia, Roger Falconer | Who's Who, Roger Falconer | ORCID

Julia Barfield

Julia Barfield, MBE RIBA, FRSA, Managing Director + Co-founder of multi award winning Marks Barfield Architects and is co-creative entrepreneur of the London Eye and Brighton i360. She is leading the practice towards a regenerative future with a focus on retrofit and the circular economy. MBA’s diverse portfolio includes culture, residential, workplace, bridges, transport, sports and leisure as well as renewable energy projects in tidal power and urban wind. She helped

establish Architects Declare in 2019 in response to the Climate Emergency, which has now spread to 28 countries globally and over 7000 signatory companies

Steve Pickard

Steve Pickard is a retired Minehead businessman who now lives in West Quantoxhead and also knows the area well. He was on the Minehead Town Council for some years and has an extensive range of local contacts. Steve has been involved in schemes for a West Somerset Tidal Power Lagoon since 2013. He leads the local promotion and liaison for the scheme.

Stephen is: A farmer’s son and worked on the family farm until 20yrs old and then moved to Somerset where he has been for the last 51 years. A retired businessman who was running his own building and development company alongside with hotel and cafe. Stephen set up a company called Longbay Sea Power to Develop a Tidal Lagoon which disbanded. He then became a Director Tidal Engineering and Environmental Services Ltd and then a Director of West Somerset Lagoon Ltd. I was on the Town Council in Minehead and have a wealth of experience in running my own business for the last 51 years. I am passionate about West Somerset and Exmoor and very knowledgeable with area and the surrounding I may not have got letters behind my name but I have got a university of life.