From the ER article (also name checked in the Spurtle):
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The Director of Place, Paul Lawrence, a council official, attended the meeting to try and explain the current position. He was accompanied by a member of the council’s Communications team and also Alasdair Sim of Sweco, an engineering, environment and design consultancy. Mr Sim is now a technical director, but he used to work on trams when employed at the council, so travel and traffic management is very much his area of expertise.
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From Mr. Sim's LinkedIn profile we can ascertain that he held a senior position in Edinburgh Trams from 2011 until a year ago. Among his many responsibilities were "heading up the transportation modelling work streams" and "land and property, third party legal agreements and since March 2013; leading the stakeholder engagement, communications and media team on the project."
Before that, from 2006 to 2011, Mr Sim worked for TIE Ltd, where his role as Interface Director was wide ranging, included land purchases, TROs, planning and transport modelling.
Previously at AECOM he had a hand in the tram, Dublin's Luas too. Also demand forecasting and traffic modelling for the Kincardine Bridge, M77 extension, and Monkstown Ring Road.
Prior to that, he worked on traffic modelling and revenue forecasting for major toll road schemes in Johannesburg, South Africa; and worked for Fife Council as a traffic forecaster/planner.
Basically he's a roads engineer and traffic modeller who segued into trams.
Presumably he has also been responsible for the traffic modelling for Picardy Place/Leith Street redesign and its underlying assumptions.
Basically, I think we can say with some confidence that the 2007 TIE design for Picardy Place is "his". He is the person (literally) driving the continuation of this design through the various stages up until now, and he is still involved as a consultant due to his role in planning the tram extension to Newhaven.
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