Sustainable development

Showcasing striking sustainable design, Vulcan House stands as the second highest BREEAM scoring building in the UKAt Mott MacDonald, balancing global human and economic needs while safeguarding the environment for future generations is central to our role as a responsible practice leader in sustainable development.

We are committed to integrating the key elements of sustainable development into all aspects of our services, operational practices and culture. We seek to be proactive, by considering sustainability issues in our projects and business activities, and by providing our customers a source of extensive knowledge on sustainability.

Buildings

Our approach to building design aims to reduce environmental impact through using passive design techniques that allow the building’s active energy to be reduced. Buildings produce CO2 through their process of construction and the burning of fossil fuels to provide energy to deliver and produce materials. Heating, cooling and ventilating a building also produce high levels of CO2. We work with you and your architects to integrate the design of structures and building services, incorporating low energy design techniques at the outset to reduce energy consumption.

Environment

The breadth of our experience in all sectors means our environmental experts understand the key issues that may arise on your project. Working alongside your planners and designers, we identify changes and mitigations that make a real difference.

Our services include ecology, environmental impact assessments, landscape architecture, climate change, conservation and biodiversity enhancement, pollution monitoring and remediation, carbon footprinting, flood protection and waste management. We can also give you business policy and strategy advice, environ-mental management plans and advice on risks and liabilities.

Energy

Mott MacDonald's integrated service covers all technical, commercial, regulatory and environmental aspects of renewable projects. We bring world-class expertise in the latest generation technologies – wind, solar (PV and thermal), hydro, biomass, tidal, wave and waste to energy.

Water

Our breadth of expertise extends globally and encompass all aspects of the water cycle and beyond. Whether your business involves water resources, water supply or wastewater, we can provide innovative solutions. From flood risk assessment and urban drainage to coastal management, we are contributing to the longer term sustainability of communities and the environment.

Mott MacDonald has been assisting the water industry through a range of initiatives including whole-life carbon costing for water engineering schemes to innovative processes for renewable energy generation from sewage sludge.

Transport

Mott MacDonald promotes sustainable transport systems by designing more energy efficient solutions and promoting initiatives to encourage behavioural change at the household and individual level to reduce car use. Our work covers all sectors from rail, road, air and sea. Input ranges from creating real-time traffic information websites that help the UK’s Highway Agency combat congestion to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the rail sector through more efficient construction techniques.

Communities

Social development is an essential part of sustainable develop-ment, transforming social structures to improve society’s capacity to fulfil its aspirations. We work with you and local communities to protect and where possible, promote social development processes throughout sustainable infrastructure projects.

Health and education

Combining our health and education expertise with cross-cutting skills in water and sanitation, environment and infrastructure will help bring about positive change for vulnerable communities and work towards the Millennium Development Goals. These range from halving extreme poverty to combating disease and providing universal primary education, all by 2015.

Supporting global and national response to HIV and AIDS, we are working with governments, bilateral development agencies, multilateral agencies, global health partnerships, national institutions and non-governmental organisations.

Waste management

Our expertise in waste management and recycling is shaping the future of the waste and resource industries. Through technical and commercial best practice we provide pragmatic and innovative solutions for the demands of this evolving industry. From devising recycling, resource recovery and residual waste strategies to advising on the procurement of waste treatment facilities, we cover all aspects of waste and resources management.

Improving our own performance

In 2008 we committed to reduce our own environmental impact by cutting our carbon footprint through an active programme, which will help make significant year on year reductions in our per capita carbon emissions. To measure this we produced our first Group-wide carbon footprint calculation – approximately 36,000t of CO2 or 2.8t per employee in 2008. Our footprint will be reduced through various initiatives set out in our Carbon Action Plan.