Sally Russell: Bringing engineering insight and cross-sector experience

Sally Russell on her leadership of Mott MacDonald’s water and environment business

Most engineers can point to a project that shaped the direction of their career. For Sally Russell, who is now leading the water and environment business, that project came early in her career working on Yorkshire Water’s service reservoir programme.

The programme involved developing a standardised design deployed across more than 20 sites, giving Sally exposure to new ways of delivering infrastructure at scale. It combined repeatable design with programm-level thinking, alongside approaches such as offsite manufacturing and early digital delivery methods that were innovative at the time.

“Being involved in developing a standard product and applying it across a large programme really strengthened my technical grounding,” she says. “But it also broadened my role beyond pure engineering.”

Alongside the technical work, Sally was increasingly involved in shaping design across multiple projects, bringing together teams and managing delivery as well as contributing to the engineering itself. “I found myself naturally moving into co-ordinating the design and supporting others to deliver,” she explains. “That’s what opened up the opportunity to move into a more senior role.”

That shift marked the start of a transition away from a purely technical path and towards a wider role, combining technical understanding with design management and people leadership – an approach that has shaped her career ever since.

Moving from design and build

Civil engineering was a natural fit for Sally, combining maths and physics, subjects she enjoyed at school, with a desire to apply those skills in a practical, real-world context. She went on to study for a master’s degree in civil and structural engineering at the University of Leeds, a city she still calls home today.  

A summer placement with Mott MacDonald, working in the bridges team, gave Sally her first experience of applying engineering in practice and reinforced her decision to pursue a career in the industry.

That experience led to her joining Mott MacDonald Bentley, the group’s design and build contracting business. Here she was able to step straight into a role that combined design, consenting and delivery on site.

“Starting my career in a design and build environment was a steep learning curve,” she says. “You’re not just producing designs in isolation, you get to see them being built, you understand what works and what doesn’t – it’s very much sink or swim. That really sharpens your judgement as an engineer.”

The breadth of that early experience, spanning both design and delivery, provided a strong foundation and, ultimately, led to her involvement in the Yorkshire Water programme that would go on to shape her career.

It was rewarding to see people collaborating and building something bigger than the individual parts

Gaining cross-sector insight

After more than a decade in design leadership roles in the water sector and two periods of maternity leave, Sally was keen to bring her experience into a broader leadership role within Mott MacDonald’s advisory and programme delivery business. There, Sally led the specialist advisory portfolio, which helped her gain broad industry knowledge, as well as further sharpen her leadership skills.

“The specialist advisory portfolio brought together experts that were previously spread across the business with the aim of creating a centre of excellence for services such as risk, procurement, cost intelligence and health and safety,” she says. “The teams worked across all our markets, which gave me some great cross-sector insights and understanding of how different clients approach similar challenges.”

Sally also describes the move as a step change in the scale and complexity of her leadership. At the start, there were 350 people looking to her to set the strategy, tone and culture for the new portfolio.

“I needed to support the team to learn from each other, but also to bring the different services together so they could work more effectively as one,” she says. “It was rewarding to see people collaborating and building something bigger than the individual parts.”

Not only did Sally support the team to grow together, she also helped drive growth in demand for their services too. As a result, the number of people working within the specialist advisory portfolio also increased by 20% to meet that increase in demand under her tenure.

Building on her experience in the specialist advisory portfolio, Sally went on to take on leadership roles in the health business, further broadening her knowledge beyond her water sector roots.

“I’ve always found it fascinating to step into new industries,” she says. “You can have deep market expertise within the team, but my role is to create the environment where that knowledge is shared and people work together more effectively.”

New role, new focus

Her new role leading the water and environment business brings Sally back to the sector where her career began. It also gives her the opportunity to lead the environment and consents business, as its role becomes ever more important in enabling the delivery of major infrastructure.

This comes at a time of significant opportunity, with sustained investment and a strong pipeline of work across the water and environment markets. Sally is focused on how the business can bring its capabilities together to respond to that demand and apply cross-sector learning. At the same time, she will be ensuring it keeps pace with the increased use of digital tools and data in how infrastructure is planned and delivered.

“What I’m most looking forward to is what we can achieve together,” she says. “We’ve got such a strong foundation, an incredible depth of expertise and a real opportunity ahead of us. It’s about building on that and making an even bigger impact for our clients and the communities we serve.”