2025 speakers

Smart Meter Programme Director – Responsible for installing Smart meters across the UK

Andrew has worked for Scottish Power for 25 years across a variety of roles. Previous to this role he was Operations Director managing onshore and offshore back office processes together with responsibility for all billing, debt collection, energy settlements and the SP Metering team. His career history within Scottish Power includes a variety of customer facing roles and managing contact centres.

Giles joined the NIC in 2019 from Ofwat as part of the leadership team delivering the Future of Regulation Study. He was appointed interim Director of Policy in September 2019 and was made permanent in this position in October 2020. He is a member of the NIC’s Senior Management Team, recently led the NIC’s Rail Needs Assessment and is now leading the baseline assessment for the second national infrastructure assessment.

He was at Ofwat for seven years where his work included leading Ofwat’s sector review into the impact on water customers of the ‘Beast from the East’ sudden freeze and thaw. He ran the review of whether competition should be introduced to residential customers. He was Portfolio Director for the 2014 price review, responsible for transforming the way that Ofwat engaged and categorised price controls.

Previous roles at Ofgem included leading offshore transmission (designing the competitive tendering regime) and seconded national expert at the Australian Competition and Consumers Commission.

Suleman joined UK Power Networks in May 2015 as Director of Safety, Strategy and Support Services and is responsible for ensuring the safety, health and wellbeing of more than 6,000 employees. Other responsibilities include leading the future energy and innovation agenda for UK Power Networks.

Previously Suleman was a Managing Director at Accenture, leading the utility network operations practice in the UK.  Suleman has 15 years utilities experience, delivering business transformation, company restructures and operational performance improvement across gas, electricity and water sectors.  He holds a BSc (Hons) in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Scott joined ScottishPower in 1996 after graduating from the University of Glasgow with a degree in economics.  His experience has been gained across a number of roles predominately within Finance, Strategic Planning, Regulation, and Financial & Regulatory Reporting.  In these roles Scott has played a significant role in previous price control reviews and has been involved in a number of group strategic projects, including acquisitions and Business Change Programmes.

Over the course of the last 5 years Scott has been increasingly involved in the area of asset risk management and system planning and design across Transmission and Distribution. As a result of this, Scott was appointed as Network Planning & Regulation Director at the end of 2014, increasing his responsibilities to include Asset Management, System Design & Planning, Process and System Development and Workforce Renewal.

Scott is a member of the Board of Directors for SP Distribution, SP Manweb and SP Transmission.

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Saeed is an experienced executive with over 30 years experience in energy trading, utilities and trading & risk management solution providers. At EDF Trading, served as CTO building a global energy trading house and at National Grid played a key role in implementing NETA. Saeed was the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Quor Group, a leading Commodities Trading & Risk Management solutions provider. Saeed is an energy market regulatory expert and has been technical advisor to ACER and the European Federation of Energy Traders.

Carol Johnston is a visionary in enterprise and mobility technologies for the utility industry. For over 20 years she has successfully guided product marketing and product management for energy technology leaders including IFS, Clevest, ABB Software and Itron – identifying and developing emerging technologies to help energy organizations and utilities deliver safe and reliable services in a sustainable manner.

An accomplished Project Director with a track record of successfully delivering complex projects. Led high-profile public policy, governance, and review projects in the water sectors in Australia and globally. Joe has recently been focused on developing policy and regulatory requirements for the NEOM Water Sector and Food Sector in the Middle East. Provided recommendations on Australia’s national utility benchmarking framework and spearheaded the development of a National town and city water security framework. Skilled in communication and facilitation, engaged with senior government executives to prioritize national water policy reform priorities and actions.

Joe holds a degree from the Australian National University, receiving recognition for excellence in Agricultural Science and Technology and Environmental Policy.

Rob is an infrastructure asset management specialist with over 12 years’ experience of working for private and public sector organisations both as a client and a consultant. Rob has a thorough working knowledge of asset management theory combined with direct experience its implementation in a variety of organisations and contexts. Rob uses his skills and talents for systems thinking and his industry experience to help organisations deliver value for their customers, shareholders and regulators.

Prior to Ricardo, Rob worked at KPMG leading several asset management capability improvement projects for UK water and rail sector clients. From 2011 to 2016 Rob worked at United Utilities where he managed its Integrated Asset Planning process. This was a core framework that underpinned the company’s approach to strategic investment in its regulated water, wastewater and bioresource assets.

Ed is European Director of Public Policy for ServiceNow. He previously served as a Special Adviser to Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May, and Chief of Staff to the Deputy Prime Minister, Oliver Dowden. In the latter role he oversaw the UK’s resilience functions, including cybersecurity, biosecurity and frontier AI safety, and led on public sector AI adoption. He has also worked in Parliament and was a Partner at the business advisory firm, Flint Global. He is a Senior Policy Fellow at Policy Exchange where he works on the implications of superintelligent AI.

Educated in Dublin, Paris and London, Volteras CEO Peter Wilson specialised in Information Systems, pursuing a passion for innovation in clean energy. He set up his first company, a smart charging app for EVs, in 2022, but realised there was no reliable infrastructure in place to transfer data in real time. Along with two co-founders, Wilson then pivoted to solve the problem. He set up Volteras: a platform purpose-built to stream hyper-accurate, live information from any device in the energy ecosystem. Wilson’s goal for Volteras is to enable innovation in businesses across energy and mobility to power a green, sustainable future.