Martin is an award-winning landscape architect and an accomplished artist and designer with more than 30 years’ experience. He is a principal landscape architect for CLOUSTON associates in their Sydney office which following a merger in June 2022 is now a division of Beveridge Williams. Martin was the lead author of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, Climate Positive Design Action Plan published in October 2022. He believes that good design is not just about how good it looks, it’s about how well it works. Martin will be talking around issues of mitigating emissions while adapting to increased heat and rainfall variability in designing new sporting facilities. Martin will be using a comparison of the climate impacts of artificial turf and natural turf to talk about climate action in sports facility design and what you can do.

John Neylan has worked extensively in the turf industry as a Turfgrass Agronomist for nearly 40 years. John has extensive experience in undertaking research and consultancy with a wide range of clients including golf, major sports stadia, local government and racetracks and has expertise in soils, sports turf profile design, drainage, water management and turfgrass evaluation. John has undertaken research into: • The performance of playing surfaces as it relates to profile construction and management. • Sand testing as it relates to sports turf profile construction and performance. • Water and irrigation management. • The effects of effluent water on turf and soils. • Turfgrass selection and assessment for sports surfaces. John has lectured in soils, drainage, irrigation management, environmental management and construction at several campuses. In addition, he has presented papers at numerous turf conferences and seminars and has written extensively with over 350 published papers and articles.

Martin has over 40 years’ experience in the sport and leisure industry and provides extensive sports management, programming, planning knowledge and insights into the design, procurement, management and maintenance of sports fields and facilities. He is the Chair of IAKS Expert Circle on Sports Surfaces and currently the Technical Consultant for Football Australia, the NRL, Rugby Australia and Hockey Australia, and has written numerous books on synthetic sports surfaces for the industry. He has worked in local government in UK and Australia, and for the past 15 years has been integral to the adoption of synthetic sports surfaces in Australia and the improvements in quality. These experiences influence the practical approach and pragmatic design, procurement and programming guidance he shares. Understanding the use of synthetic sports field technology to cope with the demands that sports are now asking for in terms of number of hours and intensity that community fields being placed upon them.