John Seabourn: Growing Tomorrow’s Talent at APEM Group

Tom Allen (0:06)

Welcome back to Ctrl Alt Lead, the podcast from Computing, where we talk to IT leaders about what's moving in the market. My guest this week is John Seabourn, CIO at Environmental Consultancy, APEM Group. Now, the environment is a hot topic right now, as is artificial intelligence. So we've blended those two. We're talking all about AI and its impact on the environment and the workforce now and in the future. Please enjoy. John, thanks for joining me today. Let's start by talking about APEM and your role there. So it's a big environmental consultancy. What does that mean?

John Seabourn (0:44)

And thanks for having me on the podcast, Tom. I really kind of enjoyed listening to these over the last few years, so great to be on it myself. So I joined APEM Group about a year ago as Chief Digital and Information Officer, and it's been a fantastic journey so far, leading our technology innovation and data agenda. My role is responsible for our global IT, environmental data solutions team, and that includes our aerial survey operations, sensor technologies, and large volume data processing. Exciting area with recent advances in drones and sensors. With APEM, we've got locations across the globe, and we provide independent consultancy and expert scientific advice to a wide range of industries including water, renewables, infrastructure, powers and utilities, ports and harbour, as well as regulators and governments around the world. And within that, we provide a wide range of services to our clients, including our world leading digital aerial wildlife surveys, environmental impact assessments and approvals, marine water and terrestrial ecology, geospatial insights, shipping and navigational risk assessments, rehabilitation, enclosure, heritage advice, and landscape visualization, to name just a few. Great.

Tom Allen (1:58)

So demand for these environmental services must be skyrocketing at the moment, which is great. And it's awesome to hear how technology is integrated so deeply into the stack.

John Seabourn (2:11)

Yeah, absolutely. And the technology we use across all of those consultancy pieces is really kind of impressive. And the broad range of capabilities we have of a business. And that's really what drives a lot of kind of clients to as being that kind of partner of choice for them, where we can provide a capability that expands their ability to deliver their kind of renewable projects quicker and sooner, meeting all those environmental impact assessments that exist all around the world.

Tom Allen (2:39)

Yeah. So the sort of big one I think we need to talk about though is artificial intelligence, which everyone is talking about, but in the environmental space, the use is quite different to what the insurance company might get up to, for example. So I know that you've spoken to your team about AI quite recently. What hopes and concerns stood out from them when you talked to them?

John Seabourn (3:03)

Yeah. So we've been running some digital awareness sessions. We did our first one about two or three months ago, and we chose AI as that kind of first topic just to get people kind of excited into wanting to kind of learn and develop some kind of ideas a little bit more. And I opened the session with a really kind of simple human question, and it was just, how does AI make you feel? And the word cloud that generated was brilliant. We had kind of excited but nervous, apprehensive but positive, curious but concerned. But one of the other themes that really came out was concern for the environment, which is perhaps surprising for an environmental consultancy with the people that we kind of employ. But the most common answer that we got was efficient and since running that session, we've had numerous stories from people around the business where they've tried a little bit of GenAI or they've approached us around kind of the potential of computer vision. And it's really kind of encouraged that kind of curiosity that we want to see from our teams to try new things to see what kind of technology can do to a business like ours and how that can improve it.

Tom Allen (4:11)

Right. How about any sort of... I suppose what was the thinking from new joiners to business, people who have started quite early on in their career, entry-level roles? We hear a lot about how AI is going to make entry-level roles obsolete. Do you think that's accurate? And I suppose as a follow-up question, is that just short-term thinking for companies to do that, or is it just good business sense to save money?

John Seabourn (4:39)

I think my honest answer to that is, it depends. As a leader, I want efficiency, but I also want to grow future leaders. And junior roles bring those kind of fresh ideas and energy into businesses. And AI can help, but it shouldn't replace that kind of human spark. I think it's all about the kind of balance. With businesses like APEM, we're a very people-centric business, and I think we do need to find and strike that balance. And that is a challenge, and definitely kind of a challenge for all businesses, but particularly the people-centric ones. I think we have seen some companies go too far and roll back on some of those commitments. And there are plenty of others, I think, are just sitting there patiently waiting to see what happens. The one thing I am confident on though, is that AI is more valuable with people, and people are more valuable with AI. And the key for me is using that combination to solve some actual problems, and not just using it because it's kind of trendy. I mean, we all wanted an app 10 or 15 years ago, and it's probably not this similar now in boardrooms. Everyone wants to be kind of talking about AI. But I think what we really need to do is force that kind of clarity, which for me then builds trust with our kind of client and staff in how we're using AI in the right way.