Clare Wildfire

What do you do at Mott MacDonald?

I am the global cities lead at Mott MacDonald, which means advising on sustainable development using systemic thinking to push boundaries and improve people’s lives. Much of my work today focuses on decarbonisation and climate resilience; supporting cities in their decarbonisation journeys as well as city-greening and managing a changing climate. I am passionate about delivering healthier, more inclusive outcomes for cities and the power of both working in partnerships and the collaboration between stakeholders and communities.

Tell us about your career journey

I am a mathematician by training and my journey into the world of engineering began when I joined a company that specialised in sustainability. Here I was trained as a building services engineer. I worked on a really wide range of projects from refurbishing schools with low energy principles to undertaking acoustic engineering of university buildings. With hindsight I think that my background in maths was really helpful as I tend to think in patterns rather than in precedents and this enabled me to bring new perspectives.

I remember being excited when the company that I worked for, Fulcrum Consulting, joined Mott MacDonald because of the much wider breadth of expertise I could learn from and provide to my clients. By this point I had progressed to director level having delivered increasingly large and complex projects. It was great to suddenly be part of a much larger team and look beyond buildings, into the wider infrastructure sectors like transport, water and energy, as well as associated skills such as health, economics, social outcomes and town planning. About ten years ago someone I respected said that they saw me as an ‘industry synthesiser’, which feels very apt for my role.

How do you contribute to Mott MacDonald making a difference to people and planet?

Mott MacDonald holds a huge breadth of capability across its services and skills that can support both the significant and the day-to-day decisions that improve places and the people who live, work and play in them.

Internally, as the necessary combinations of skills are not always obvious or found in a single team, my role is to knit them together to suit the challenge in question, be this to create healthier or more resilient or lower carbon or more inclusive or safer and more connected places.

Driving positive outcomes to these challenges often involves innovation in approach and technical solutions. So, externally, my role also includes sharing insights and championing transitional and transformational change.

And the good news is that the challenges we are facing – climate change, energy security, nature depletion, a public health crisis – are so deeply interconnected that when looked at through a place based lens the system levers that deliver real benefits for people and places become much clearer.

Do you have a mantra you live by or that motivates you?

“Standing still isn't an option. The world is constantly moving. Unless we do the same, we're effectively moving backwards – and that’s not good for business.”

Describe your role on a transformative project

I am proud of the work the Mott MacDonald-led alliance has done for the Mayor of London’s Zero Carbon Accelerator. The aim is to scale up London’s ability to decarbonise through offering free technical support to help London-based organisations on their decarbonisation journey. The support offered by the programme has included programme management, technical guidance, skills development, project planning and financial insight, and has helped local authorities, health providers, education settings and housing organisations accelerate their decarbonisation journeys.

As framework director, my role has been to oversee the programme through its mobilisation phase and into delivery. Using insights from my work on decarbonising cities, I have helped the client, the Greater London Authority, and our project team identify and refine the programme priorities and identify the strategies that will create the most impact. As highlighted in an article to celebrate the one-year anniversary, I see the three biggest components to acceleration as collaboration, replicability and the connection with investment.

At the conclusion of its first phase, the programme will have delivered well over 50 individual packages of support.