A career veteran of oil spill response and preparedness efforts, David has spent over three decades working in the oil industry in a variety of field and staff positions. He retired from British Petroleum in 2013 as the Senior Oil Spill Advisor.

Spending over 33 years in the BP and Amoco organizations, David brings a wealth of industry incident response knowledge and experience to the EMSI cadre. During that time, he held positions as Senior Oil Spill Advisor, Crisis Management/Emergency Response Coordinator, Senior Research Engineer, and Hazardous Waste Technology Specialist. As the Senior Oil Spill Advisor, David provided support to global BP businesses, offering technical expertise to various spill planners and responders. His knowledge and expertise were critical as he assisted crisis management/emergency response support to chemical businesses and oil refining, transportation, and marketing businesses. He additionally served on the company’s U.S. response team.

While working for BP in 2010 as part of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill response effort, David served as an Oil Spill Advisor and Environmental Unit Leader on the Houma, Louisiana, Incident Management Team, providing oil spill technical and scientific expertise to response efforts. As part of this IMT, he was critical in helping the Unified Command set overall strategic direction and guiding the IMTs through complex incident management situations and processes related to the spill.

Indicative of his training acumen, David has been involved in incident management training and exercises, participating on various training cadres coordinating and instructing a diverse selection of courses. He has developed and conducted joint response exercises for BP’s national response team, as well as company business units.

Continuing to give back to the community, David has served as Chairman on a myriad of professional workgroups since 1987, to include IPIECA Oil Spill Workgroup, the Industry Technical Advisory Committee (ITAC), and the American Petroleum Institute (API) Oil Spill Preparedness and Response Workgroup. In addition, David is a highly published expert on oil spill response and preparedness, with over 15 professional articles to his credit.

David is a 1974 graduate of Michigan State University with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, followed by a Master of Science in Sanitary Engineering in 1975. He additionally holds a Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Midwest College of Engineering.