Interview: Ramboll Uk&I Transport Lead On Working With Clients To Deliver ‘Sustainable Change’

Ramboll is looking to work side by side with clients throughout their projects’ lifecycle to deliver “sustainable change”, according to its new UK and Ireland transport lead.

Ann Gordon is market director for transport in the UK and Ireland at Ramboll

Ann Gordon has been with the consultancy for 20 years, starting as a young infrastructure engineer before moving into project management. She stepped into the role of market director for UK and Ireland transport in December, though it’s only since January that “it started to get a bit more real”, she told NCE.

In her time at Ramboll she has worked as project manager on “a number of internation masterplans” for a breadth of projects, from research developments to cities. This has seen her travel around Europe, Russia and the Middle East.

“My role would be to bring the different components together and understand what the engineering masterplan should look like and then look at the feasibility and viability of the site,” she said.

She also said that the two times she has been on maternity leave have been “pivotal” in her career. “You’re out of the business for a year and you come back to a generally different environment; your role has evolved,” she said. “When I came back the first time we were looking less at the international market as the national market had really heated up; things like HS2 were hot topics and I worked as project manager on HS2 Phase 2b.”

When she came back from her second maternity leave she was working engaged in digital rail, specifically the East Coast Digital Programme – “moving away from lineside signals and towards in-cab technology”.

“I guess my career has been driven by opportunity,” she said.

Along the way she has become involved in numerous “super exciting” efforts in tandem with engineering that she is passionate about including “leadership, allyship and inclusion at Ramboll to ensure that everybody can come to work and be themselves”, she said. She has also recently taken over the company’s Gender Balance Network.

“So there are lots of different facets [to my career],” she said. “But they’ve really grown on my ability to build teams and bring the right people to the right place.”

Working with clients on ‘sustainable change’

Ramboll works across all types of transport from rail to highways to ports and marine to aviation and more.

Gordon said she is most excited about the projects where “we have the opportunity to work with clients right from concept through to construction”, but even more important to her are projects where “we really have the opportunity to work side by side with our clients as a partner for sustainable change, which is core to our mission statement”.

As an example, she mentioned that Ramboll has recently been commissioned to support a port operator as its carbon management partner. “So this will be working across all of the design and build projects in its portfolio across the UK,” she said. “The exciting part of that is that we’ll be part of its decarbonisation agenda and because of the breadth of its portfolio it feels like we can make a real difference. It’s a good example of working with a client in an area where we have a lot of knowledge on and supporting it in a space we are passionate about and obviously matters to society.”

Ramboll’s work on offsite manufacture of bridges has been used on HS2 and is being adopted more widely

She also highlighted work the consultancy has been doing with a major contractor on the development of management of change (MOC) solutions.

“We’ve been at the forefront of delivering bridges using offsite construction technologies over the past decade and here we’re collaborating with a major contractor on development of its productised bridges,” she said. “We tried and tested this on HS2 enabling works and the techniques have led to really significant savings in terms of programme, but also excitingly around safety because there’s far fewer people needed on site; the components are built in a safe and controlled environment and then shipped to the location.”

The third example that Gordon mentioned was Ramboll’s recent appointment by the Department of Transport in Ireland in relation to the development of electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure.

“That work includes benchmarking against five EU cities and advising on the project portfolio, the financial analysis and procurement, including risk assessments,” she said.

While these three examples come from different spaces, Gordon said the “common denominator is how we draw on our global expertise and delivery techniques and form a really trusted partner relationship with our clients”, which is something she’s “really passionate about”.

“Our aspirations in terms of transport and growth is that the growth is sustainable and it’s built on the strength of that global platform that we have at Ramboll,” she continued. “We like to work with clients whom we really have shared ambitions with, particularly shared ambitions in terms of the climate and the future of our society.

“Those three projects really hit those aspirations and have that global reach within that trusted client advisory space.”

Ramboll is owned by a foundation, so it is “not beholden to shareholders”, according to Gordon. This means that, while it still needs to make a profit, it can focus on taking projects that it believes will “really make a difference in society”, she said.

“We have that ethos where we can be a little more selective about the projects we get involved with,” she said. “The projects that really excite us are the those where we can really make an impact and support our client in moving forward in decarbonisation, but also in the larger scale projects where the impact can be greatly felt.”

Growth in Ireland

Looking ahead, the consultancy has an ambition to continually grow, particularly in Gordon’s native Ireland, but it will maintain this ethos-based approach to project selection while chasing this goal.

“Growth in Ireland continues to be an ambition for the coming years and that involves building from a really strong base across highways, active travel, aviation, ports and marine and energy, where we’ve been working with clients to deliver project excellence for 25 years plus,” she said.

Ramboll has a long-standing relationship with Dublin Airport and is continuing to work across its portfolio

As examples of work already being done by Ramboll on the island of Ireland, she pointed out its ongoing work with Dublin Airport across its portfolio of projects, a 13km dual carriageway in Norther Ireland, work “in the data centre space” and work with local authorities on active travel.

“There’s a good breadth of different market areas that ultimately we’ll grow in based on the relationships that we’re building and the value that we can bring,” she said. “We’ll grow in line with the infrastructure programme that’s outlined in Ireland’s National Development Plan, which is quite ambitious in terms of its targets.”

Drawing on Nordic experience

Having been established in Denmark and built a huge presence in the Nordic countries, that influence is always part of Ramboll’s work.

Gordon said that Ramboll is eyeing up opportunities to leverage this knowledge in rail. She pointed out that, given its extensive work in Scandinavia, it is “arguably the most experienced consultant in delivering light rail in Europe”.

“We’ve delivered projects like the Copenhagen Metro and have been working with the city for the last 20 years, growing Copenhagen into the city that it is,” she said, adding that this knowledge can be brought to the UK and Ireland.

“We’ve dedicated time over the past two years or so, developing how to deploy those expertise and resources, how we actually do that operationally, to deliver some of our large infrastructure projects in the UK and Ireland,” she said.

Delivering the East Coast Digital Programme for Network Rail saw Ramboll draw on experience from work in Denmark

She pointed to the East Coast Digital Programme for Network Rail as an example of where Ramboll “leaned on our ‘done it before’ experience from Denmark and Finland”.

“In Denmark we are working with Banner Denmark to digitalise the whole country,” she explained. “So, we pulled on that experience to bring knowledge into the programme in the UK and that had a really significant impact on planning for the transformational journey, ensuring the readiness and also reducing the time to deliver some of the key employer’s requirements.”

A fundamental part of the company’s Nordic heritage that Ramboll brings is that it’s “uniquely rooted in sustainable design”, according to Gordon.

“That’s the mission that we bring to all of our clients and projects,” she said. “We’re constantly challenging the approach to really ask: ‘Can we do this better for the betterment of people and nature?’”

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