Recent Career
Mairi was an experienced environmental scientist when she joined IDCORE and had already set up her own consultancy business, which she kept running throughout her time on the programme. As she graduated from the scheme in 2020, she continued developing her own business, winning contracts with EMEC and the University of Edinburgh but ultimately decided that she needed the security of a full-time role in a larger organisation.
In 2021, Mairi joined Xodus, an international consultancy that encompasses all aspects of offshore engineering, including renewables, oil and gas, hydrogen and CCUS. They were a company that she knew - she liked what they did and how they did it.
Mairi is a member of their Environmental Impact Assessment team, leading on a range of projects, including the development of carbon and climate assessment for projects. Xodus are seeing an increasing demand for such assessments from their clients, who are looking for standardised approaches, aligning with best practice. This has led Mairi back to IDCORE – Xodus are sponsoring a project that she is supervising. The project seeks to augment a digital carbon assessment tool and to enable incorporation of physical climate change risks, such as changes in wind and sea levels into offshore wind farm site selection.
Quote: Mairi Dorward, Environment Specialist, Xodus
‘IDCORE is a unique partnership between academia and industry. It brings the academic rigour that we need but within an industrial context, responsive to a very different set of drivers.
For me personally, it provided the opportunity to acquire formal engineering skills and helped me to make the transition I was looking for from oil and gas to the renewables industry.
My cohort formed some incredibly strong connections - we worked well together and supported one another, indeed we are still in weekly contact.
My current job is a culmination of experience obtained across my whole career. Having been part of IDCORE, I am well connected to an extensive network including, for example, academics working on climate models and engineers working on data science. Access to this network enhances our offering at Xodus.’
Background
Mairi’s first degree was a BSc in Environmental Management from the University of Aberdeen. She then moved to Tanzania where she worked in environmental management and rural development in a school, providing environmental management training. Subsequently, after completing a policy focussed Masters in Environmental Change Management at Oxford, she moved to bp.
During the 10 years that Mairi spent with bp she delivered a range of environmental roles. These took her to Shetland, Aberdeen and London where she worked in major projects, operational roles and mergers and acquisitions. Throughout this period her focus was on the environmental engineering and management of projects across their lifecycle.
IDCORE Project
Joining IDCORE took Mairi to somewhere very different.
She took a portfolio approach to her project, working first with CorPower on the operation and maintenance challenges of a half-scale wave energy converter installed at EMEC on Orkney. She then spent two years supporting a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and the US Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to develop a field-scale sensor for measuring turbulence around tidal turbines.
Both elements of the project proved to be a good fit to Mairi’s skill set and interests, and have contributed to preparing her for the role she is now delivering.
