Mott MacDonald is a US$2bn engineering, management and development consultancy. We are working with businesses to:
- Solve some of the world’s most urgent social, environmental and economic challenges
- Help governments and businesses plan, deliver and sustain their strategic goals
- Respond to humanitarian and natural emergencies
- Improve people’s lives
- Our company operates in many sectors
Our vision and mission are underpinned by our PRIDE values. Our expertise covers buildings, communications, defence, education, environment, health, industry, mining, oil and gas, power, transport, urban development, water, wastewater and more. Our skills include planning, studies and design, project finance, technical advisory services, project and programme management and management consultancy.
For every project, we aim to deliver solutions that are cost, carbon and resource-efficient; are safe, easy and swift to deliver; are reliable and resilient and that deliver great outcomes for our clients. We operate globally with common directives and a common quality management system that is published through an online system known as STEP.
Our supply chain comprises the following:
- Partner professional services organisations who work with us to provide clients with a holistic service. These include architects, financial advisors and other infrastructure-focused consultancies.
- Organisations providing resources or services to support the delivery of our projects. These include surveyors, specialist labour suppliers and local support firms.
- Operational support services and product suppliers providing, for example, facilities management, office equipment and stationery.
Our policy
Our approach to respecting people and our suppliers is also embedded in our policies on equality, diversity and inclusion, ethics, human resources and social responsibility.
Due diligence process
In relation to slavery and human trafficking in our business and supply chain, we:
- Employ individuals through an interview process, whether they are full-time employees or contract staff. This process seeks to confirm individuals have a right to be employed for a specific job, are not breaching immigration regulations; have the necessary competence and aptitude for the position and are applying to work for us through their own free will.
- Seek to provide a living wage for all staff.
- Evaluate potential and existing suppliers using a standard questionnaire to identify competence, compliance with our values and standards and to ensure they are addressing slavery and human trafficking risks. This assessment is repeated periodically. The process is supported by our procurement policy.
Risk assessment
The value we bring is recognised by clients and, as a result, it is accepted that we charge fair rates for the work we undertake and that we pay employees and suppliers fairly. As a professional services organisation, our risks associated with slavery and human trafficking are generally low. Key areas of risk are:
- Low wage jobs, such as office cleaners and support staff
- Our commodity services supply chain, where unskilled labour is prevalent
- Our commodity purchasing supply chain
- We manage these risks through our employment and procurement policies and through our supplier evaluation process.
Effectiveness of our approach
As the risk of slavery and human trafficking in our business is deemed to be low, we monitor the performance of our suppliers in supporting us to meet our policy commitment and the services they provide to us. We also monitor our own compliance with our employment and procurement processes. In addition, we are audited around the world by third party organisations both for compliance with our internal business processes and with quality standards. We are confident this approach is appropriate to managing our risks for our tier one suppliers.
Training
We train our staff on ethics and compliance with our values, directives and processes. We also provide training on people management and communications skills and these are directly aligned with our PRIDE values. This creates a strong culture of tolerance of others, transparency in decision-making and mutual respect, that support our training on Modern Slavery and is available to all staff.
Our independent ‘Speak Up’ service allows people to report concerns anonymously and we are committed to investigate all reports received. We received no reports on the service relating to slavery and human trafficking in 2017.
Progress over the last financial year has included:
- Establishment of a Global list of suppliers, with a procedure to check compliance of our tier one suppliers. This included the launch of the Exiger supply chain management system to enable us to interrogate and verify that we hold up-to-date and accurate information about our suppliers, and to check they comply with the requirements in our policies on MSA, ethics and anti-bribery, and divulge essential financial and structural information to us.
- Launch of a programme to align our procurement contracts across the business, to include our policy against slavery and human trafficking. This requires that purchases for our office facilities or for projects, and for the provision of technical services by suppliers, be subject to conditions of contract explaining the requirements for legal compliance to MSA and antibribery legislation, as well as performance requirements’.
- Introduction of a new process in our business management systems to ensure that new suppliers are verified for compliance to our policies before they can be contracted to supply goods or services
- Launch of a new on-line training course for our staff to learn about the risks of modern slavery and its possible effects on nearly 30 million people across the world, how to spot possible abuse of the law, and how to report it within the company.
Ian Galbraith
June 2018