Bentley joins Mott MacDonald board: delivery and safety lessons for water engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Mott MacDonald has appointed Paul Bentley, long‑serving director of its contracting arm JN Bentley, to its executive board while he continues to lead the integrated design-and-build business Mott MacDonald Bentley (MMB). Under Bentley’s leadership, MMB has become a major UK water-sector contractor delivering complex civils and MEICA works for clients including Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water and Northumbrian Water. The move signals stronger board‑level representation for design-and-build delivery, with an emphasis on operational performance, safety culture and long-term framework relationships in regulated water infrastructure.
Technical Brief
- Similar integrated consultant–contractor boards can better align design risk assessments with on-site RAMS and permit-to-work regimes.
Our Take
Mott MacDonald’s UK infrastructure work appears frequently in our 391-piece Infrastructure corpus, but JN Bentley and the Mott MacDonald Bentley (MMB) joint operation are referenced far less often, suggesting this board-level move is part of a gradual shift from a project-delivery brand to a more integrated group identity.
With Yorkshire Water, Anglian Water and Northumbrian Water all named, this appointment effectively ties Mott MacDonald’s executive decision-making more closely to regulated UK water-utility frameworks, which is likely to influence how risk, safety and constructability are weighted in early design for future AMP cycles.
Given JN Bentley’s long-standing role as a direct-delivery contractor in the UK, bringing Paul Bentley onto the executive board signals that Mott MacDonald may lean further into integrated design-and-build models, which typically allow earlier embedding of safety-by-design practices on complex infrastructure projects.
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.
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