Austin is Director and Practice Manager at Cogan Environmental Consulting Limited. He is a Chartered Environmentalist with over 16 years’ experience in environmental sciences, covering indoor and outdoor air quality, odour, dust, bioaerosols, greenhouse gases and climate change. He is a committee member of The Council of Property Search Organisations and has developed a number of guidance documents in the industry, including on indoor and outdoor air quality and most recently on odour.

Throughout his career, he has been involved in over 1,000 projects across the UK and abroad, focusing on supporting planning applications and environmental permit applications. His expertise covers a diverse range of sectors, including residential, student, commercial, retail, leisure, community, education, healthcare, distribution, and hospitality developments, industrial, waste, agricultural, power generation, and utility projects, and defence, aviation, and infrastructure schemes. These have included technical reviews for both indoor and outdoor air quality assessments, and climate change assessments for aviation, as well as the provision of expert witness services for air quality and odour.

He has a long history of supporting local authorities with local air quality concerns, including Clean Air Zones, Local Plans, Air Quality Management Areas, Air Quality Action Plans, and feasibility studies involving microsimulation modelling. Austin has also been involved in multiple projects for JNCC, EA, GLA, National Highways and NGOs, undertaking research and development activities. He is an experienced business manager, having managed multiple high-profile projects as well as operating multiple environmental businesses, where he previously led the development of licensed meteorological data which is widely used by the industry.

Austin is also an international expert in the field of climate change, having monitored greenhouse gases globally. He pioneered research in satellite observations and instrument design at the UK’s Space Research Centre, where he was involved in software and algorithm development, instrumentation design, data analysis and collaboration with many international bodies, including NASA, JAXA, CNES and ESA. He has produced numerous scientific papers and presented at conferences both nationally and internationally.