Colin began working in the environmental sector after graduating with 1st Class Honours in Environmental Biology from Napier University (Edinburgh) in the summer of 1998. Later that year he was employed as the Research Co-ordinator of the Contaminated Land Assessment & Remediation Centre (CLARRC) at The University of Edinburgh. In 2001 he became the Director of CLARRC taking over from Professor D.Andrew Barry who is now Professeur de technologie écologique at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

 In 2001 he was appointed as Programme Co-ordinator of the £11.4M LINK Bioremediation Programme which supported a portfolio of 12 collaborative research projects and ends in 2009.  

He has also served as a Director of the Scottish Environmental Industry Association (SEIA) from 2003-2004 although the organisation was wound up in 2005 and between 2002 and 2005 he was the Chairman of CL:EAR Ltd (an ENTRUST Environmental Body) receiving landfill tax to support environmental projects. In 2006 he was appointed as the Monitoring Officer for 3 collaborative contaminated land projects funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) having served as a reviewer on the funding panel which made the awards.  

Since 2007 the majority of his time is spent leading the Scottish Environmental Technology Network (SETN) which grew out of both CLARRC and the SEIA. SETN now supports more than 120 companies in the Scottish environmental industry from our base in the School of Engineering at The University of Edinburgh.