Our actions

How we performed on ESG and sustainability, carbon, our code of conduct, CSR, EDI and health and safety

ESG and sustainability statement

We aim to be a leading global partner in sustained economic, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing.

Across our organisation we are committed to integrating the economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability in our culture, projects and operations. This includes how we govern ourselves, make decisions and demonstrate our commitment to this agenda.

Globally, we lead by example by being an active member of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact initiative for businesses to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies, integrating its unifying principles into our strategy, culture and operations. We also promote company-wide alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and foster external partnerships to drive targeted contributions towards them.

Recognising our responsibility as a global consultancy in tackling the world’s biggest challenges, our PRIDE values – progress, respect, integrity, drive and excellence – guide us in how we translate commitments into behaviour and actions. As a business, we actively manage our carbon emissions to minimise footprint in the short, medium and long term.

Great importance is placed on behaving and operating safely, and without causing harm to health.

We pride ourselves on being an organisation in which people can be themselves, feel valued and safe, and are enabled to perform at their best. Great importance is placed on behaving and operating safely, and without causing harm to health. We promote a strong culture of social responsibility, respecting our stakeholders, local cultures and customs, while striving to earn the trust of the communities we work in.

We ask that you judge us by our actions. This is how we walk the talk.

If you would like to know more about these topics, please continue reading.

See our global ESG memberships, pledges and certifications

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As a business, we actively manage our carbon emissions to minimise footprint in the short, medium and long term.

Madeleine Rawlins, global practice leader, climate change

Carbon

We are achieving emissions reductions through our carbon reduction plan.

In 2022 we worked hard to develop and submit science-based targets which support our ambition to become net-zero by 2040. We are proud that in April 2023 our targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), an independent organisation that provides guidance and standards to drive greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.

We’re committed to achieving a 90% absolute reduction in scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions by 2040, measured from our base year 2019. (Scope 1 includes emissions from the use of gas in our offices, vehicle and machinery fuel, and leaked refrigerant gases from air conditioning units. Scope 2 emissions are from electricity used in our offices. Scope 3 includes emissions from purchased goods and services, capital goods, upstream transportation, indirect fuel and energy use, operational waste, business travel and employee commuting.) Our overarching science-based net-zero target is supported by several near and long-term targets – see here for more information.

We closely monitor emissions and report them in line with SBTi requirements.

We are implementing mechanisms to decarbonise our global carbon footprint, taking our suppliers with us on our carbon reduction journey and encouraging our colleagues to make lower carbon choices, by embedding the carbon impact of business travel in our internal travel booking system, for example.

Emissions from our purchased goods and services, capital goods, and upstream transportation and distribution will be addressed through supplier engagement: we aim that 70% of our suppliers by spend will have science-based targets by 2027. We recognise the importance of reducing our emissions in absolute terms, which is why our long-term target covers our full scope of emissions. Right now, we are focused on gaining a better understanding of our supply chain and working to align suppliers with our carbon reduction trajectory.

The blue line shows our committed 2030 and 2040 absolute reduction targets, while the purple line shows actual reductions in the three years since 2019, our global emissions base year. This diagram includes all scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

This diagram represents only those emissions covered by our near-term reduction target (excluding emissions covered by our supplier engagement target). The purple line shows reductions achieved by increasing energy efficiency and the uptake of renewable energy in offices, and by reducing our construction emissions through the procurement of lower carbon fuel. And it also reveals the impact of COVID-19 on our business operations, which reduced emissions sharply in 2020. As business-as-usual activities have resumed, emissions have rebounded, but they are well below our committed carbon reduction pathway to 2030, shown by the blue line.

33% reduction since 2019

Our targets are aligned with a 1.5°C temperature pathway and inform our carbon reduction plan. To date we have achieved good progress. Our 2022 carbon footprint was 189,178tCO2e. This includes emissions from our contracting business (Mott MacDonald Bentley Contracting) and our global consultancy business. The figure is 92,602tCO2e less than our 2019 baseline, representing a 33% reduction in absolute emissions, including biogenic emissions.

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We are implementing mechanisms to decarbonise our global carbon footprint, taking our suppliers with us on our carbon reduction journey.

Alicia Winter, principal advisor for Group carbon reduction

Health, safety and wellbeing performance

We are committed to embedding health, safety and wellbeing into everything we do, wherever we work, to minimise harm.

Our safety and wellbeing performance in 2022 shows considerable progress in making positive interventions to improve both safety and wellbeing outcomes for our employees.

30,000+

safety interventions

In 2022, we made 31,008 interventions to improve employee and stakeholder safety. This compares with 19,578 in 2021 and 4993 in 2020. In terms of staff wellbeing, there were 7268 interventions last year, almost double the number in 2021.

7000+

wellbeing interventions

Overall, our accident record is good: low numbers were reported, and the number of lost time accidents (LTAs) continues to decline. There were four LTAs in 2022, resulting in seven lost working days. In 2021, 10 LTAs and 109 lost days were recorded. Across the business, there were 129 accidents in 2022, a slight increase on the 98 reported in 2021.

Reporting of mental health and wellbeing impacts is rising. Last year, there were 289 reported cases of work-related ill health that resulted in 1641 days lost. This compares with 248 cases and 900 days lost in 2021. Data from the next few years will show whether the increase is due to heightened societal awareness, better reporting mechanisms or workplace changes. Our wellbeing programme supports staff in understanding their personal wellbeing factors and we are actively working, through our wellbeing champions, to mitigate stress at source in our project delivery through an integrated risk assessment approach.

You can find out more about our safety and wellbeing journey here.

Culture of safety reporting

Our drive to embed a positive safety culture throughout the business includes raising the percentage of staff reporting the action they have taken to create a safer and healthier working environment. The chart below shows the reduction in our overall accident incidence rate (AIR – the number of injuries x 10,000 / number of employees), which remained low despite the return to office-based working as Covid-19 restrictions were lifted. Positive interventions (PI) have risen sharply, reflecting an increase in the percentage of our staff reporting incidents from under 20% in 2020 to 50% last year. The number of PIs is high compared with similar organisations – a sign of our positive reporting culture and that we are steadily moving to our target for zero harm.

Accident incidence rates have fallen in recent years

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We are actively working, through our wellbeing champions, to mitigate stress at source in our project delivery.

Laura Hague, group safety manager

Equality, diversity and inclusion

Our new equality, diversity and inclusion strategy is responsive to the needs and challenges of specific geographies.

While our new equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) strategy, ‘Everyone’s business,’ set out our vision and global priorities, we were mindful that each of the regions we work in requires an EDI approach that’s locally appropriate. In 2022 we recruited four regional EDI managers to lead a nuanced approach for each of the regions that we operate in.

A global vision, regionally implemented

EDI regional initiatives and successes

As an organisation, we want as much diversity and inclusion as possible to represent the societies and cultures within which we operate. Please note, we use region-specific terminology that respects cultural differences and recognises variations in acceptable practice across our global footprint.

Here is just a sample of our regionally led EDI activities.

Highlights in our Asia Pacific, New Zealand and Australia business saw our Trusted Allies initiative support LGBTQIA+ interns during their transition from university into the corporate workplace. Our Sydney office led a collaboration with the Aboriginal Business Forum, which resulted in 25 indigenous Australian businesses being added to our supplier list.

In the UK and Europe we continued our work with the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers to provide careers events for university students and young people in schools. We also took part in the 10,000 Black Interns initiative, consequently recruiting one of our interns to our ‘Buildings and Cities’ business.

In India we launched a returners’ recruitment campaign called ‘We Don’t Mind the Gap’. It aimed to encourage women who had taken career break back into employment. The campaign included mentoring and upskilling to re-energise their skills.

Among several programmes in the US and Canada was a focus on representation of women and people of colour that increased their representation to 29% and 25% of our workforce respectively. It is notable that the latest statistics from the US Department of Labor show that only 16% of employees in the engineering industry are women and just 15% are people of colour.

Find out more

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We are committed to translating our ambition into meaningful action on the ground.

Graeme Clarke, group head of people

Corporate social responsibility

Serious about corporate social responsibility

A broad range of initiatives in 2022 saw us build on the work of previous years that included forging and strengthening strategic relationships with community organisations to support societal improvement.

Colleagues volunteered their knowledge, skills and time to help people in our communities, worldwide. Across the Group, 13,000 hours were dedicated to local communities through corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects.

A team helped construct a 78m suspended pedestrian bridge across the fast-flowing and dangerous Rubyiro River in Rwanda, making necessary daily journeys safer and easier. Our Singapore office provided health and social care support to hundreds of migrant workers.

CSR activities in 2022 had a strong skills and employment emphasis. In Melbourne, Australia, our people helped refugees and asylum-seekers with their academic and career goals. In the US state of North Carolina, Mott MacDonald volunteers helped deliver an initiative to get young people excited about engineering: They worked with middle-school students from diverse backgrounds to explain the benefits of making sustainability central to the engineering design process.

In London a volunteer programme to mentor refugees helped unemployed and underemployed refugees to find work, by matching their skills and experience to job opportunities, and coaching to write effective job applications and perform strongly in interviews. Colleagues also worked on an initiative to increase the number of young black men employed in the infrastructure and construction sectors, as part of a project run by the Greater London Authority.

Find out more

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In collaboration with Balfour Beatty, 11 volunteers contributed their time and skills over two weeks to help construct Nyabihunyira Trailbridge in Rwanda.

Andrew Izzet Lee, group corporate social responsibility manager

Our Code

Our Code helps us build trust and mutual respect with colleagues, clients, partners and society

We made business ethics a key discussion point in 2022: We launched a series of ‘dilemmas’ to illustrate a range of situations that can arise at work and raise awareness of how to respond to them.

The dilemmas were introduced to help embed Our Code, a framework for applying our values of progress, respect, integrity, drive and excellence – PRIDE.

Senior leaders across our business used the dilemmas to lead conversations with colleagues, typically at the beginning of team meetings. Throughout the year, those conversations spanned ways to:

identify and combat corruption
stand up to bullying
promote social inclusion and equal opportunity
protect our assets, information and reputation

Six questions guide individuals to make good decisions and do what’s right: Is the situation or action legal? Does it comply with Mott MacDonald policy? Is it consistent with our values? Would I be comfortable if this appeared in the news or on social media? Would this be a good way to operate if we did things this way all the time? Does it help to build our ethical culture and reputation?

If the answer to any question is ‘no’, measures should be taken to avoid, stop or rectify the situation. We have a confidential, independently operated reporting service, Speak Up, for situations where staff, partners or clients feel unable to register or escalate a concern via their manager, human resources, or another manager in the Group.

Our Code applies to everyone we employ and work with, worldwide, and to increase its accessibility we translated it into 12 languages in 2022 with work on five more now underway.

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Whether we face an everyday dilemma or something more serious, as individuals or as a business, Our Code is here to help us make good decisions and do what’s right.

James Harris, executive chair