Andy was a police officer for thirty years, working in Thames Valley Police, Central Scotland Police, and Police Scotland with secondments to the Scottish Criminal Records Office and the Scottish Police College. During his service he undertook a variety of operational and specialist roles, retiring in 2014 as a Superintendent.

Over the past decade, his research has focused on organisational and occupational culture within the context of police socialisation, the Scottish police reform programme, and cross-professional boundary working both within the Scottish Crime Campus and between the emergency services when working together to improve community wellbeing. In 2022, he completed his PhD submitting a thesis entitled ‘A degree is not necessarily the answer: A comparative analysis of initial police learning in Scotland, Sweden and Finland’. He was appointed the SIPR Co-Associate Director of the Education and Leadership Network in August 2023 together with Associate Professor Andrew Wooff.