Shannon is an environmental scientist specialising in environmental management, environmental audits and natural resource auditing. She has undertaken several major projects, including a three year construction and operational Department of Defence radar project on two islands in the Torres Strait, for which Shannon was the environmental manager. Other projects include licensing under the Local, State and Federal legislation; and environmental assessments and audits for Queensland Department of Main Roads. Shannon has written construction EMPs for major infrastructure projects and has acted as Construction Environmental Manager, implementing EMP and licence requirements and undertaking conformance audits. Shannon has skills in EMS auditing against the ISO14001 standard, and is certified for these audits. In addition Shannon is a Certified Erosion and Sediment Control Practitioner. She has been extensively involved in the development and implementation of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) for Citiworks Townsville, Kagara Zinc Ltd, and the Department of Defence (Lavarack Barracks).

Since 2003 Shannon has conducted freshwater ecology studies for a number of areas in Queensland including the Kagara Mt Garnet Zinc Project, Kagara Chillagoe Project, Burton Coal Mine, Wateranga Exploration mine site and Gunpowder Copper projects. Shannon has completed AUSRIVAS, a nationally recognised course in aquatic macroinvertebrate monitoring, and holds Queensland accreditation. With the assistance of NRA’s IT specialist, she has developed a user-friendly database, called NRA Envirocheck, that stores and queries environmental monitoring data. This database was specifically designed to manage water-monitoring results that are reported against environmental licence conditions.