Wates adds social value, sustainability heads: delivery lessons for project teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Wates Construction has appointed Sasha Simmonds as head of social value and Josh Steiner as head of sustainability, as the group reports £464m of social value generated in 2025. Simmonds, formerly head of social value at O’Neill & Brennan, previously supported more than 300 people in prison into employment via release on temporary licence schemes and will now lead Wates’ next phase of social value strategy and partnerships. Steiner, who has spent nearly a decade shaping Wates’ sustainability approach, will deliver a five-year roadmap focused on carbon reduction and resource efficiency towards net zero.
Technical Brief
- Release on temporary licence employment schemes indicate structured site access, supervision and training protocols for prison leavers.
- Specialist community programmes are likely to be embedded in project procurement, tender evaluation and contract performance conditions.
- Five-year roadmap structure allows alignment of project design stages with phased carbon-reduction and materials-efficiency targets.
- For major infrastructure frameworks, such quantified social and sustainability governance increasingly influences bid scoring and whole-life value assessments.
Our Take
Across our infrastructure coverage, Wates and Wates Construction appear frequently in senior leadership reshuffles (e.g. the 2026 appointments of George Mosey and Kevin Grace), signalling a deliberate build-out of a management bench that can carry group-wide social value and sustainability targets into regional delivery teams.
Given Wates’ strong presence in Department for Education frameworks and London building work, embedding dedicated social value and sustainability leads is likely to tighten alignment between central ESG strategy and project-level procurement, particularly around supply-chain partners such as O’Neill & Brennan in the UK market.
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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