AtkinsRéalis industrial director move: grid and storage implications for engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
AtkinsRéalis has appointed former SSE major projects director Ryan Macdonald as market director for power & industrial across the UK & Ireland, a new role spanning energy networks, grid infrastructure, power and renewables, and energy storage. He will lead work on next‑generation distribution and transmission networks, long‑duration energy storage schemes and industrial power systems for energy‑intensive users including manufacturers, data centres and ports. The move signals a push to integrate siting and permitting, advanced engineering and digitisation into large, complex energy and industrial assets.
Technical Brief
- Scope explicitly covers energy networks, grid infrastructure, power and renewables, energy storage and industrial processes.
- Mandate includes advisory and delivery for energy‑intensive users: manufacturers, data centres and port facilities.
- Integration brief links siting and permitting with advanced engineering and project digitisation under a single leadership line.
- Combined “international expertise with local delivery teams” model suggests centralised design with regionally executed construction support.
Our Take
AtkinsRéalis appears only sporadically in our Infrastructure coverage compared with UK contractors focused solely on delivery, suggesting its design-and-advisory-led model is still a differentiator in UK & Ireland project pipelines.
With SSE also in the frame and most of our UK & Ireland infrastructure items tagged to ‘Projects’ and ‘Contract Award’, this appointment likely targets major energy-transition work such as grid reinforcement and flexible generation assets rather than conventional civils alone.
Across the 13 Infrastructure stories in our database, UK & Ireland pieces tend to cluster around multi-year frameworks rather than one-off jobs, so a senior industrial role at AtkinsRéalis probably signals a push to secure portfolio-style agreements with utilities and industrial clients.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
