APEM Group, a leading global environmental consultancy, recently appointed Sean Sweeney to the role of Country Manager for APEM Group in Australia. Sean is the Group’s first permanent employee in Australia and is based in the group’s Melbourne office. Being based locally will enable Sean to engage directly with clients in Australia and lead the group’s work supporting the burgeoning offshore wind sector.
A global expert on offshore ornithology, Sean has designed and led innovative seabird surveys, behavioural studies and impact assessments at APEM Group for over 12 years. His contribution to advances in seabird science and how they interact with offshore wind developments is backed by multiple scientific papers and presentations at international conferences.
Sean brings significant experience in the process of gaining consent for offshore wind development projects, including the first project in the world to rely on Digital Aerial Survey data to characterise its baseline for offshore ornithology assessments.
Since 2020, APEM Group have been supporting Australia’s first steps into offshore wind energy with work on the feasibility stage of the ‘Star of the South’ wind farm. I’m delighted to lead the next stage of the APEM Group’s growth journey in Australia. By bringing the breadth and depth of the group’s capabilities in offshore ornithology and marine mammals surveys and impact assessments, we will help renewable energy developers and regulators find the innovative solutions to ensure Australia can meet its ambitious targets for offshore wind capacity.
Sean has also been instrumental in developing innovative solutions for the offshore wind sector including modelling migratory species of birds moving through development sites and the use of tracking data to assess site use by seabirds.
A lifetime ornithologist, Sean has enjoyed over 20 years of working professionally as well as voluntary work undertaking breeding bird surveys, wetland and waterways bird surveys and involvement in regional and national Atlas projects, as well as contributions to scientific, papers, grey literature and ornithological books.
Always keen to talk about ornithology and offshore wind, you can contact Sean through our Melbourne office, or find him on LinkedIn.
APEM Group expands global presence with first Australian office
Supporting Australia’s first steps into offshore wind energy
We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present.
With locations across the globe, APEM Group provide independent environmental consultancy and expert scientific advice to a wide range of industries including water, renewables, infrastructure, power and utilities, ports and harbours as well as to regulators and governments around the world.
We provide a range of services to clients including our world leading digital aerial wildlife surveys, environmental impact assessments, marine, water & terrestrial ecology, geospatial insights, shipping and navigational risk assessments and landscape visualisation.
Find out more: www.apemgroup.com
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Large scale surveys collecting data on marine wildlife for offshore wind farms were still in their infancy as Sean joined APEM Group in 2012. Sean has seen many changes in both surveying and impact assessment methodologies and technologies. From boat-based surveys through to digital aerial surveys and from paper field records to digital field data collection, Sean’s team have been providing expert advice and guidance on ornithology matters, making use of the latest technologies and research to drive innovations and delivering robust evidence-led EIAs and Habitat Regulation Assessments (HRAs) both in the UK and Ireland, and in more recent years, the United States, Asia and Australia.
In a first for the company, Sean project managed a 24 month data collection programme of Digital Aerial Surveys (DAS) for a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP). This project, an offshore wind farm (OWF), was also the first project to go through the Development Consent Order process and the first project in the world to rely on DAS data to characterise its baseline for offshore ornithology assessments. The project was also the first through the Planning Inspectorates Examination process, replacing the previous process of project reviews through public hearings and representing a learning curve for the developers, for the lawyers and for APEM.
Sean has been called in to represent applicants for offshore ornithological matters through seven Planning Inspectorate Examinations (PINS) – highly pressurised periods of a project’s post-application process. In this phase, many bespoke and innovative reviews of seabird behaviour are undertaken, and developers consider new methods to assessment potential effects from OWFs on species and populations as well as developing mitigation and compensation measures to help reduce or offset any predicted impact levels.
Sean and the APEM Group have developed multiple new and innovative solutions that are now widely used and applied by other consultants for proposed projects, including the use of tracking data to assess site use by seabirds, SPA connectivity assessments using flight direction statistics, modelling migratory species of birds moving through development sites, apportioning risk between species colonies, developing correction factors for availability bias for auks (guillemots, razorbills and puffins) and harbour porpoise.
This has led to invitations to speak at many conferences on specialist offshore ornithology topics including assessing and predicting abundances and displacement of red-throated divers, gannet responses to OWFs, auk displacement and mortality rates, the effects of OWF lighting on shearwaters, the use of LiDAR to collect seabird flight heights and improve collision risk modelling and other topics.
This experience provided Sean with the opportunity to lead the Ornithology Consultancy team in 2019, becoming APEM Head of Ornithology Consultancy in 2021, which he describes as the pinnacle of his ornithology career and a huge honour.
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