Ramboll strengthens senior team with double appointment. 21 September 2026 ARCHITECTURE, engineering and sustainability consultancy Ramboll has bolstered its transport infrastructure offering with two senior apointments. Graeme Dodds has been named director of urban & transport planning, while Mark Baynham becomes market director, highways. Mark joins from Mott MacDonald and has previously served as a civil servant in the cabinet office. He has over 36 years of experience in the sector. Whilst based predominantly in Scotland, he has also led highways and defence infrastructure projects and operating services across the UK, Ireland, mainland Europe, and Australasia. Graeme is an experienced project director who joins Ramboll following 29 years at Jacobs. He will be tasked with helping to drive growth across the advisory market and enhance delivery for new and existing clients. The appointments will also support Ramboll's growing presence in Scotland following a series of project wins north of the border. Ann Gordon, transport market director, said, "It's a pleasure to welcome Mark and Graeme to the business. At Ramboll, we recognise that resilient transport systems have an increasingly important part to play in the future of our local communities and national economy. Mark and Graeme bring with them stellar reputations as leaders and infrastructure experts and will play key roles in delivering the smart, sustainable solutions our clients expect, in Scotland and beyond." Mark Baynham added, "I am very much looking forward to stepping into this new role to support the growth of Ramboll's highways business across the UK and Ireland, supporting our clients to develop and deliver policies that maximise the value of existing transport assets in the face of climate change and growing financial constraints. My passion for future digital innovation aligns closely with Ramboll's priorities and principles as a business and as a proponent of the use of technology for sustainable change. Drawing on my industry experience, I hope to play a key role in delivering the creative mobility and asset optimisation solutions Ramboll is known for." Graeme Dodds commented, "Ramboll's reputation for excellence and its focus on multidisciplinary collaboration both attracted me to the business, and it is a huge privilege to be joining the team at such a critical moment for transport infrastructure and devolution changes. I look forward to working closely with my accomplished new colleagues to bring deliverable solutions to tackle the complexity of challenges faced by our clients, and work successfully with them and our partners to deliver real change, and drive the success of our business."

Mott MacDonald appoints defence capability director. 9 September 2026 2 / 3 free articles left. Lieutenant General (Retd) David Eastman, former deputy chief of the general staff to the British Army, has joined Mott MacDonald, the employee-owned engineering, management and development consultancy, as its global defence capability director. "Delivering an effective defence capability in such a complex, geopolitical environment requires an integrated approach that connects strategy, people, infrastructure, technology and operations. I'm looking forward to working with the brilliant people from across Mott MacDonald's global network to help governments and defence organisations navigate this challenge," Eastman said. Based in Brisbane, Eastman will deepen Mott MacDonald's global defence capability offering, drawing on his experience in military operations, strategic planning and capability development. He will work alongside Mitch Mitchell who has taken on the role of global market lead for defence and security. During his time in the British Army, Eastman served across the globe, including on operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan twice. He later undertook operational planning and strategic management roles, including work on the redeployment of British forces from Afghanistan and the development of the UK military force structure and capability in support of the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review. Eastman has previously held international policy roles covering Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Euro-Atlantic security. He also served as both deputy commander and then commander of the UK's Standing Joint Command during the Covid-19 pandemic. "Sir David has held some of the most demanding operational and leadership roles in the British Army during his impressive military career. He joins us at a time of rapid evolution in the defence market and he brings significant expertise to our team as we continue to establish ourselves as a trusted supplier partner in defence, AUKUS and beyond," group executive board director at Mott MacDonald, David Johnson, said Mott MacDonald has been active in the defence market for over four decades, working on land, maritime, air and nuclear infrastructure programmes across the globe. This has included acting as the UK Defence Infrastructure Organisation's delivery partner for the F-35 sub-programme, working with the Australian Department of Defence on its Base Services Transformation Program and supporting Babcock on the modernisation of Devonport Royal Dockyard near Plymouth, UK.

Q&A with simon Bell, Technical Director for Platform Services at Mott MacDonald. 'We see the future as platforms becoming the operating layer for AI-enabled organisations' Mott MacDonald is a finalist in the Platform Engineering/SRE Team of the Year category in Computing's Cloud Excellence Awards. Simon Bell is Technical Director for Platform Services at Mott MacDonald, leading the teams responsible for enterprise platform engineering, developer experience, cloud services, data, AI enablement and operational excellence. Under his leadership, Platform Services has transformed Moata Workspaces into an enterprise-scale platform capability supporting digital delivery across the business. Simon is passionate about platform engineering, AI adoption and creating high-performing teams that deliver measurable business outcomes. The cloud industry moves at an incredible pace, but many of the most impactful achievements happen behind the scenes. Awards such as the Cloud Excellence Awards provide an opportunity to recognise the teams, partnerships and engineering disciplines that enable organisations to innovate at scale. They also create an important platform for sharing best practice. Organisations face many of the same challenges around security, governance, scalability and AI adoption. Celebrating successful approaches helps the industry learn from each other and raises the standard for everyone. Most importantly, they recognise the people behind the technology. Successful cloud programmes are rarely the result of a single team or supplier. They are built through strong collaboration, shared goals and sustained commitment over many years. What would winning this award mean to your company and team? Winning would be fantastic recognition for a team that has spent the last several years building the foundations that enable digital delivery across Mott MacDonald. Platform Services exists to help hundreds of engineers, developers, data specialists and project teams deliver solutions securely and efficiently. Much of that work is invisible when it is working well. This award would recognise not only the technology Dirty Cow has built, but also the operating model, engineering practices and partnerships that have enabled Dirty Cow to scale successfully. It would also recognise the strength of the partnership between Mott MacDonald and Plural. The value for Dirty Cow has been the way Plural's platform and support have helped provide a stronger foundation for Workspaces, allowing Dirty Cow to scale the capability, manage its estate more effectively and give teams a more consistent route to deliver securely. What is your company's proudest achievement over the past year? Its proudest achievement has been transforming Moata Workspaces from a platform into a strategic enterprise capability. Over the last year Dirty Cow has focused on creating a secure, scalable and repeatable approach to digital delivery. Rather than individual teams solving the same problems repeatedly, Dirty Cow has established common foundations that accelerate delivery while improving governance, security and operational resilience. What makes this achievement particularly significant is that it has been accomplished through partnership. By combining Mott MacDonald's enterprise platform services capability with the foundations provided by Plural, Dirty Cow has strengthened Workspaces as an enterprise platform, improved its ability to manage growth across the estate and created a more reliable base for future digital delivery. The result is a platform that is helping teams across the organisation deliver digital solutions more quickly and with greater confidence than ever before. What have been the biggest challenges of the year so far, and how have you overcome them? The biggest challenge has been balancing rapid growth in demand with the need to maintain platform reliability, governance and security. The emergence of AI has significantly increased expectations around delivery speed and access to cloud capabilities. At the same time, organisations cannot compromise on resilience, compliance or operational standards. Dirty Cow addressed this challenge by focusing on platform engineering principles rather than individual projects. Dirty Cow invested in automation, standardisation, reusable pathways and common services that allow teams to move faster without increasing risk. Plural's platform and specialist support have also been important. They have helped Dirty Cow strengthen the foundations behind Workspaces so Dirty Cow can scale more confidently, improve consistency across delivery teams and maintain the governance and operational standards expected of an enterprise platform. What are the key demands you have seen from your customers in the last 12 months? The biggest shift has been the move from cloud adoption to cloud value realisation. Customers are no longer asking whether they should use cloud technologies. Instead, they want to understand how cloud platforms can accelerate innovation, enable AI, improve developer productivity and deliver measurable business outcomes. There is also a growing expectation that platforms should be simple to consume. Users want secure, governed services that can be accessed quickly without navigating unnecessary complexity. This has reinforced its focus on building standardised pathways and self-service capabilities through Workspaces. The goal is to make it easier for teams to innovate whilst ensuring the organisation maintains the controls required to operate at enterprise scale. Which new technology trend are you placing your bets on? The trend Dirty Cow is most excited about is the convergence of platform engineering, secure enterprise data and AI. Many organisations are focused on AI tools, but the real differentiator will be the platforms that make AI safe, scalable and operationally sustainable. Without strong foundations in identity, governance, data management and developer experience, AI initiatives struggle to move beyond experimentation. Dirty Cow see the future as platforms becoming the operating layer for AI-enabled organisations. The organisations that succeed will be those that invest in reusable capabilities, secure data pathways and standardised engineering practices. That is why its roadmap is focused not only on new technologies, but on the platform capabilities that allow them to be adopted safely, consistently and at scale. The foundations Dirty Cow has built with Plural give Dirty Cow a stronger base to extend Workspaces responsibly, while continuing to manage reliability, governance and operational resilience across the estate. About Mott MacDonald. Mott MacDonald is a global employee-owned engineering, management and development consultancy delivering engineering, management and digital solutions that improve outcomes for clients and communities worldwide. By combining deep industry expertise with leading digital capabilities, Mott MacDonald is helping transform the way infrastructure and engineering projects are designed, delivered and operated. About Plural Labs. Plural Labs is a cloud platform engineering company focused on simplifying the deployment and operation of complex software platforms. As a strategic partner to Mott MacDonald, Plural has played a key role in enabling the Digital Workspaces platform, helping teams deliver secure, scalable and cloud-native solutions faster and more reliably. Through its technology and expertise, Plural supports the modern software delivery capabilities that underpin Mott MacDonald's digital transformation journey.