Alan Harper

Alan started in chemical engineering as Research Associate at Edinburgh moving to ICI as a process engineer, mainly on batch processes. He worked on start-ups, process support and design. Over the years he developed an interest in safety and environment doing some initial work in HazAn, supporting and later chairing HazId and HazOp. He became interested in applying objective methodologies to environmental situations, gas and estuary dispersion, developing comprehensive models. Working full-time in environment from 1990, he worked to minimise the impact of individual processes, moving to process integration and site environmental schemes. Moving processing from waste treatment to prevention became a theme, slowly developing Constructive Challenge.

At this point, he started active IChemE involvement on the Scottish Branch Committee, through volunteer roles in assessment of applications, membership committee, ACTS reviews, university accreditation, chairing working groups and most recently as Chair of the Professional Development Sub-Committee which supervises ACTS, Initial Professional Development and CPD.

He 'retired' early from an ICI successor and was recruited, as a result of his IChemE reputation, to Heriot-Watt teaching sustainability engineering, progressing into Process Intensification, Future Scoping, heat transfer systems, energy (also at Edinburgh for a few years) and notably Whisky Distillation. At the same time he was technical manager for NISP and the Resource Efficiency KTN .

He was asked by IChemE and another professional institution to join the Registration Authority of Science Council for six years, also joining Engineering Council as a liaison officer and moving up to the Quality Assurance committee. In both roles he monitored the licences of institutes. Similarly he handled Governance for the Society for the Environment, becoming their Honorary Secretary.