People
David Simmonds
Director
David Simmonds is an internationally recognized specialist in analysis and modelling of the interactions between land-use transport and the economy, with over 30 years’ experience in this field. He established David Simmonds Consultancy (DSC) in 1990, and has led its growth to the present position where it is the leading practice in its particular field. He has also served as a Director of Marcial Echenique & Partners Ltd (ME&P) and of Hague Consulting Group UK (now part of Rand Europe).
At ME&P in the 1980s he was responsible for a wide range of studies using the MEPLAN package. He initiated the development of the DELTA package in 1995, and has been responsible for many enhancements and much of its application since then, in the UK and abroad, with a particular focus on the convergence of land-use/transport and economic modelling and the development of associated appraisal methods. His major projects in the last few years having included the development of land-use/economic models of France for the Société du Grand Paris and of Great Britain for Highways England, and the development of a new approach to combined land-use/transport appraisal for Transport for London, first applied to the Crossrail2 proposals. He is a regular contributor to professional conferences and to professional/academic journals, and an Honorary Professor at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.
Richard Potter
Associate Consultant
Richard Potter has been an Associate with DSC since 2012. He studied Geography at the University of Southampton and Town and Country Planning at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He has worked in Town Planning, research and intelligence, and policy in Local Authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. He was seconded to the Office for National Statistics to help set up Neighbourhood Statistics. He also worked for the Government Office for the East of England as Head of Analysis, improving its analytical capability to become the highest rated Government Office. In 2011 Richard set up Analytics Cambridge and has worked with DSC on the Summertime/Double Summertime and the HS2 projects.
Tom Simpson
Managing Consultant
Tom is a specialist in land-use transport planning, having worked in the field since his graduation. His experience at DSC has covered a number of topics including wider economic appraisal, simulation of transport interventions and extensive analysis of the complex patterns resulting from land-use and transport interaction. Tom has worked on the whole range of the company’s modelling work, including data collection and preparation, running of land-use and transport models, analysis and understanding of results, preparation of GIS based outputs, formal reporting and presentation of results to clients as well as training clients to use DELTA software. He is currently managing major projects in London, Hampshire and the West Midlands.
Mélanie Bosredon
Managing Consultant
Mélanie joined David Simmonds Consultancy in October 2005 after completing her Master’s studies in GIS and Remote Sensing at the University of Cambridge. She focused her M.Phil research on Transportation issues and undertook her final dissertation on Accessibility Modelling. Prior to joining DSC, Mélanie worked on various GIS-based projects related to diverse domains, including industrial risk assessment and agricultural management. At DSC she was initially involved in the programming of the DELTA package; she has since worked on a wide range of DELTA-based projects, as well as providing specialist GIS contributions across the firm’s work. She was responsible for the coordination of the TELMoS project in Scotland from 2008 to 2010, and is currently managing the development of a national land-use/transport interaction model of France for the Société du Grand Paris. In parallel, she is completing her PhD dissertation at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London.
Emma Revill
Managing Consultant
Emma is an economist specialising in land-use/tranport planning, modelling and economic appraisal. She has substantial experience in developing new applications of DELTA and in running DELTA models to appraise land use and transport schemes. For Leicestershire County Council, Emma undertook original research using the LLITM Household Survey to inform the calibration of the land-use model. This involved estimating binary logit models for the probability of a household intending to move and multinomial logit models for a moving household’s choice of location. More recently she has taken a leading role in the application of the FLUTE model for the Sheffield City Region. She has also worked on the Auckland model of DELTA since she rejoined the firm in 2006, and is currently managing the development of a new component to model land development taking account of competition from different types of floorspace.
Valentina Nacar
Principal Consultant
Valentina Nacar is a Principal Consultant with expertise in land-use/transport planning, modelling and economic appraisal. She has been developing her technical skills in the field since she first joined DSC in 2010. Her role at DSC has included a wide range of tasks spanning development, enhancement and calibration of DELTA land-use\transport interaction (LUTI) models; collection, manipulation and processing of data for the database creation; setting up and running tests for the appraisal of transport and land-use schemes and analysis and interpretation of the results including the use of GIS tools and SPSS. She is also contributing to the maintenance and enhancement of DSC’s DELTA software package. She was team coordinator in the development of a national LUTI model for HS2 Ltd, and has since taken the same role in the development of a French national LUTI model for the Société du Grand Paris. Since October 2020 she has been Framework Manager for DSC’s work with Transport Scotland, with responsibility for the development and application of the national land-use/economic model, TELMoS, and for its interfacing with the national transport model (TMfS) and regional models. She has extensive experience in liaising with other consultants, interacting with clients and coordinating junior staff.
Alistair Brereton-Halls
Senior Consultant
Alistair joined DSC as an Analyst in 2016, after completing a degree in Geography at King’s College London. He was promoted to Senior Consultant in 2020. In his time at DSC, Alistair has acquired extensive knowledge of the processes driving land-use and transport planning. He is an expert in the application of the DELTA package, and has provided training in its use to multiple clients. On top of this, he is skilled in the use of VBA and Python, which he has utilised to build tools and programs for DSC and client use.
Charlotte Schnoebelen
Consultant
Charlotte is an engineer with a background in Urban and Territorial Planning. She joined DSC in 2018 after having worked in the development and design of land use in Germany. She studied at the Ecole Polytechnique de l’Université François Rabelais where she earned the MSc in Urban and Territorial Planning. She also holds the titre d’ingénieur diplômé, engineer accreditation by the commission des Titres d’Ingenieur (CTI) in France. She has acquired extensive knowledge on land-use/economic modelling and data analysis. She has worked in particular on the development of TELMoS (the Transport Economic Land Use Model of Scotland) and its application for a range of appraisals including the testing of local and strategic land use plans, and the assessment of the economic and social impacts of public transport and strategic highways policies. She has also developed a range of Python scripts for DSC to perform data processing, statistical analysis, and data visualization.
Elaine Maclean
Consultant
Elaine is an applied mathematician with a background in combinatorics and mathematical modelling. Having previously worked as a Data Analyst, Elaine joined David Simmonds Consultancy in 2017 where she currently operates as a Consultant. Elaine has contributed to on projects under the LATIS Lot 3 framework, to the Highways England Economy Model, as part of the programming team developing a Wider Economic Impact Calculator for Transport for the North, and on a number of other land use and economic models employed in the appraisal of various transport schemes and planning policies.
Daniel Lee Savage
Senior Analyst
Daniel joined DSC in October 2018 as an Analyst. He studied MSc International Economics and BSc Economics, both at the University of Essex. He has plenty of working experience using DELTA to test and analyse various land-use and transport scenarios. Daniel has worked on a wide range of projects and been involved in the collection and processing of policy inputs, setting up, running, troubleshooting, analysing tests and reporting their results. He has also been heavily involved in appraising land-use and transport schemes using DELTA models (particularly the London model, LonLUTI) and DSC’s own cost-benefit analysis package, ULTrA. These schemes have included Crossrail 2, the Bakerloo Line Upgrade and Extension and the alternative proposals for the Abbey Wood to Ebbsfleet Corridor. Daniel is team coordinator for several projects where he oversees day-to-day programme delivery and corresponds with clients.
Stanimira Georgieva
Senior Analyst
Stanimira’s original qualifications were in psychology and neuroscience, in which fields she gained experience in experimental design, data collection and analysis, statistical forecasting, modelling and presentation. Since joining DSC, she has worked in particular on implementation of integrated land-use/transport appraisal (originally known as LUTEE, now ULTrA) in connection with Transport for London’s land-use/transport interaction model, LonLUTI, and on the development of a land-use/economic model of France, as well as assisting with work for HS2 Ltd and the Welsh Government.
Rebecca Gray
Analyst
Rebecca joined DSC in 2021, whilst completing her MSc in Applied Economics at the University of Strathclyde. She studied International Business at the University of Edinburgh for her first degree, which gave her a strong background knowledge of economics before starting the MSc. Her Masters dissertation focuses on applications of auction theory on auctions for offshore wind energy. Since joining DSC she has worked mainly on the application of the TELMoS18A model of Scotland. In particular setting up, running and analysing model runs for Transport Scotland and Glasgow City Council, and revising and operating the interfaces which pass outputs from TELMoS18A to the Regional Transport Models for each of Scotland's major urban areas.
Bius Schehl
Analyst
Bius joined DSC in June 2021 with a background in ecology. She studied BSc Hons Animal Biology at Edinburgh Napier University and MSc Quantitative Methods in Biodiversity, Conservation and Epidemiology at the University of Glasgow. While she is passionate about wildlife, she also has a keen interest in computer-based disciplines. Since starting her undergraduate degree, Bius has built a strong foundation in data analysis, modelling, coding in R and GIS, skills which she utilises as an Analyst at DSC. Since joining the company, she has been assigned to work on TELMoS (The Transport, Economic and Land-Use Model of Scotland), ASP (The Auckland Strategic Planning Model) and the A50/A500 Corridor as part of the Midlands Connect project.
Simon Sutcliffe
Programmer
Simon Sutcliffe joined DSC in 2001 having completed his A-levels in Maths, Physics and Computing at the Lawrence Sheriff School in Rugby, Warwickshire. Simon joined as Technical Assistant to oversee the network of computers and to program DELTA. He organised the networking infrastructure for two office moves and has programmed DELTA since starting in 2001. In July 2005 Simon was promoted to Programmer. He has worked extensively on the whole DELTA model, including the creation of graphical interfaces to the tabulation and initial test setup. On non-DELTA matters Simon has created a user-editable Knowledge base, a file exchange facility and an electronic DELTA Change control system to enhance the transfer of information within DSC. Simon currently resides in Auckland, New Zealand, working remotely on DELTA and other programming tasks.