Kevin Murray Associates benefits from an incredibly strong team comprised of both staff and consultants who we can readily draw on. This structure means we have a depth that is only comparable to much larger consultancies while retaining the adaptability and close working relationship that is available with a niche/boutique practice.

Kevin Murray
Director
Kevin Murray is a highly experienced town planner and urbanist, a Fellow and Past President of the RTPI and a Founding Director of The Academy of Urbanism. He has a specialism in complex community and stakeholder engagement.

Kevin founded Kevin Murray Associates in 2002, having previously been a Director of Tibbalds and EDAW.

He regularly facilitates the development of visions and strategies, action plans and development projects, with and for communities. He has worked in national and regional planning, urban regeneration, masterplanning and urban design, and community and stakeholder engagement.

He has also provided expert evidence on townscape and spatial planning matters to public inquiries, as well as to both Houses of the UK Parliament. He served on the Egan Review and Academy of Sustainable Communities.

Kevin is Honorary Professor of Planning at Glasgow and Dundee Universities and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He teaches spatial planning futures and stakeholder engagement.

Currently, Kevin is Chair of Partners in Planning, skills and knowledge network.

Jas Atwal
Director
With an educational background in Sociology and Psychology, Jas is an experienced and accomplished engagement specialist, event organiser and training provider. She is a Director of the Academy of Urbanism, where she is also Congress Curator.

She has previously worked in local government at Kent County Council, at the Royal Town Planning Institute and Landor.

Jas often manages complex consultation and engagement processes, with communities and stakeholders with diverse and sometimes conflicting needs. Jas is therefore keen to ensure a collaborative approach to engagement and that the methodology, tools and techniques employed and the means of capturing feedback are creative and accessible, enabling effective participation and learning by all those involved.

Jas also guest lectures at University College London on effective community engagement.

Iain MacPherson
Associate Director
Engagement | Planning | Research | Project Manager
Iain MacPherson is an accomplished town planner, urbanist and project manager. Having been with KMA for 7 years, Iain has gained a wide variety of experience in the planning and regeneration sector.

His background in community work aligns with KMA’s, Place Momentum, which is to focus on engagement and capacity building to deliver successful places. He has worked at all levels of the planning system across the UK providing spatial and policy analysis from the national strategic level while facilitating workshops for NPF3 through to the local level providing site-specific advice working for sites.

He is as a skilled rapporteur, effectively capturing the output from community and stakeholder consultations, and reporting this material in a format that allows design teams, planners and other specialists to deliver solutions that are grounded in stakeholder and community feedback, ideas and needs.

Increasingly Iain works closely with communities, enabling them to develop strategies and projects that have the community at the heart of delivering them.

Rim Chouaib
Engagement | Planning | Research | Design
Rim Chouaib is an experienced architect and town planner. With KMA, Rim has acquired an array of experience in the planning and community engagement sector. Her philosophy aligns with KMA’s which is to place the community at the heart of the process to empower the communities and deliver vibrant, successful places. Her analytical and graphics skills are key to integration between engagement and in the conceptual production of masterplans. She is able to transform community ideas and aspirations into visual images that reflect future visions of places.

Rim has worked closely with communities all over Scotland and the UK, using her engagement and design skills to communicate and bring to life community ideas.

Before joining KMA, Rim gained experience in Planning through her studies by participating in several international workshops in Turku (Finland), Venice (Italy), Brussels (Belgium). As part of her architectural studies in Beirut (Lebanon), Rim took an interest in heritage, conservation and regeneration. Her final Master thesis was about the rehabilitation of an ancient ottoman structure “Khan Tamasili” into a craft and art school for the inhabitant of Tripoli, El-Mina.

During her postgraduate study at the University of Glasgow in Town planning and Real Estate Development, Rim won the Royal Town Planning Institute West of Scotland Chapter, Student Award 2016 for excellence in coursework on the Spatial Planning Strategies course for the project G.O.V.A.N. The project consisted of creating a local development plan for Govan, 2030.

Husam Al Waer
Associate
Research | Training | Urban Design
Husam is an architect-planner ‘urbanist’, with a background in architecture, urban planning and sustainability. He is currently Reader in Sustainable Urban Design and Evaluation at the University of Dundee and has worked with KMA on many research, training and engagement projects in the UK and internationally.

Husam is an award-winning author, having published several books and many articles on urban design and sustainability, placemaking facilitation, and evaluation of performance. He brings his insight at the intersection of theoretical and contemporary policy and practice to his teaching and his community and stakeholder engagement events.

With KMA he has been involved in charrettes at Clydebank, North Berwick and Springburn, as well as Scottish Government Research into the Planning Review Evidence. He has also undertaken leading edge place change training with Kevin Murray at Dundee University and at universities in Egypt and Jordan.

Husam is a Corporate Member of the RTPI, Academician with Academy of Urbanism, Urban Design Practitioner with UDG, and BREEAM Communities, assessor.

Carol Somper
Sustainable Communities
Carol is a trained facilitator with a good technical understanding of the sustainability challenges facing developers, asset-owners and communities. She has 30yrs experience of working in the public policy, NGO and commercial consultancy sectors on stakeholder engagement approaches to tackle issues and explore opportunities for improving towns, villages, rural and coastal landscapes. Her sustainable development planning and place-making experience includes work as a BREEAM Communities assessor.

Carol’s KMA involvement includes facilitating at community drop-ins and workshops to enable co-production of new framework masterplans for the Otterpool Garden Village, Kent, Oxfordshire Cotswolds Garden Village (OCGV) , Gloucester Estates Regeneration initiative and the Warrington Central6 masterplan. Also a Building with Nature Associate, she is West Oxfordshire DC’s BwN Assessor for their OCGV AAP policy. Carol has also completed many sustainability appraisals for places, areas and organisations where stakeholder engagement was key to securing climate resilience planning and area or site-wide management plans.

Lynne Gibbons
Office Administrator | PA
Lynne has been with Kevin Murray Associates since 2017, bringing her extensive background in local government service management, community work, communications and community engagement. Through the course of her career to date, Lynne has gained a variety of experience in working with individuals and communities and engaging with politicians at local and national levels, most recently as constituency office manager and senior parliamentary assistant to a Scottish MP. Lynne has a strong track record in building effective cross-sectoral partnerships.

Lynne is a graduate of the University of St Andrews and completed a post-graduate Diploma in Community Education at the University of Edinburgh.

Lynne’s professional background includes a number of years as an Associate Assessor with Education Scotland, covering aspects of Learning Communities. An original member of the Standards Council for Community Learning and Development in Scotland, Lynne was involved in the development and implementation of professional registration for the field.

Lynne has particular interest and expertise in working with adults with learning disabilities, and in tackling barriers to inclusion.

In KMA Lynne blends her professional knowledge and expertise with her organisational skills in the role of Company Secretary.