Ports

These are among the challenges, drivers and opportunities we’re here to help you address. Working with our team you’ll get the technical expertise and digital innovation required to plan, design, procure, build and operate everything within your port boundary. And beyond.

Whatever the challenges of your project, you’ll get a solution that adds value for your business. We will work with you to:

1. Define your needs and target the right solution, considering economic, social, environmental and regulatory conditions governing trade and shipping developments.
2. Make sense of complexity, through options appraisal, pre-feasibility and feasibility studies; environmental, social and safety assessments; technical review; cost and programme estimating and development of procurement strategies.
3. Gain certainty over costs, with economic modelling, investment advice and asset management, all backed by engineering know-how.
4. Save time and cost, by using digital solutions to augment planning, design, delivery and operation.
5. Reduce safety risk, by taking an integrated view of potential technical, procedural and behavioural risks.
6. Streamline commissioning and drive operational performance, applying systems engineering, using commercial incentivisation, and applying smart infrastructure solutions to make better decisions faster and cheaper.
7. Achieve sustainability, through rigorous environmental, social and governance processes, spanning both the asset lifecycle and the value chain.
8. Improve social outcomes, by using every project as an opportunity to achieve accessibility, inclusion, empowerment, resilience and wellbeing.
9. Reduce carbon towards net-zero, by cutting capital and operational carbon in line with science-based targets, using the principles of PAS 2080 (the international standard for managing infrastructure carbon, authored by Mott MacDonald experts), and sustainably offsetting residual emissions.
10. Adapt to the physical impacts of climate change, by mapping adaptation pathways, taking account of climate science, observed local changes, your operational needs, and asset management and renewal cycles.
11. Drive digital innovations, making use of appropriate software to design, test, optimise, present and store your infrastructure in digital form; we design and apply in house solutions alongside industry standards to provide tailored digital solutions that offer insights which optimise your business.

We work directly for port owners and operators, in design-build teams, and for project lenders. Find out more about our expertise in:

Breakwaters
Dredging and reclamation
Port design and improvement
Port planning
Terminals and facilities

Our ports team is closely integrated with other expert teams across Mott MacDonald, giving you one-stop access to integrated transport, energy and water, environmental, geotechnical and buildings solutions. Projects include container, roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) and cruise terminals, commodity bulk and breakbulk facilities, and small craft harbour projects. We undertake projects from berth to gate. Examples include:

• Port of Southampton, UK – detailed design and construction support for upgrading the existing container terminal
• Swansea West Pier, Wales – concept design through to construction site supervision of a key functional community asset​
• Port of St Helier, Jersey – port master planning services for transformative strategic development​
• Puerto Caucedo, Dominican Republic – feasibility study, master planning and detailed design to increase port capacity​
• Felixstowe, UK – tender and detailed design of quay wall with technical support during construction at the UK’s largest container terminal

Creating the net zero logistics network: better risk management, new opportunities and better business for ports

• Success for ports the world over is being shaped by the green agenda, and in particular the drive towards net-zero carbon. Consumers want it. Investors are demanding it. Policy and regulation are increasingly geared to achieving it.
• Port owners and operators that can cut energy use and carbon emissions are gaining competitive and regulatory advantage, strengthening their social license to operate, attracting capital and protecting themselves against spiking energy costs.

Find out how.