Mott Macdonald's organisation's structure:
Mott MacDonald is a US$2bn engineering, management and development consultancy. We are working with businesses to:
- Solve some of the world’s most urgent social, environmental and economic challenges
- Help governments and businesses plan, deliver and sustain their strategic goals
- Respond to humanitarian and natural emergencies
- Improve people’s lives
Our company operates in many sectors for more information click here
Our vision and mission are underpinned by our PRIDE values. Our expertise covers buildings, communications, defence, education, environment, health, industry, mining, oil and gas, power, transport, urban development, water, wastewater and more. Our skills include planning, studies and design, project finance, technical advisory services, project and programme management and management consultancy.
We operate in many countries in the world, however, all of our work, for every project, we aim to deliver solutions that are cost, carbon and resource-efficient; are safe, easy and swift to deliver; are reliable and resilient and that deliver great outcomes for our clients. For all of these, we are committed to respect all the people we interface with and to treat them fairly. We operate globally with one corporate set of policies, directives and requirements through a common quality management system that is published an online system known as STEP.
Through this approach, all colleagues in the Mott MacDonald Group, whether employed by the UK company or others around the world are required to comply with UK legislation as well as their own national legislative requirements.
Our supply chain comprises the following:
- Partner professional services organisations who work with us to provide clients with a holistic service. These include architects, financial advisors and other infrastructure-focused consultancies.
- Organisations providing resources or services to support the delivery of our projects. These include surveyors, specialist labour suppliers and local support firms.
- Operational support services and product suppliers providing, for example, facilities management, office equipment and stationery.
Our policy
Our approach to respecting people and our suppliers is also embedded in our policies on equality, diversity and inclusion, ethics, human resources, risk treatment, procurement, safeguarding and social responsibility.
To see our full set of polices click here
Due diligence process
In relation to slavery and human trafficking in our business and supply chain, we:
- Employ individuals through an interview process, whether they are full-time employees or contract staff. This process seeks to confirm individuals share our corporate values, have a right to be employed for a specific job, are not breaching immigration regulations; have the necessary competence and aptitude for the position and are applying to work for us through their own free will.
- Seek to provide a living wage for all staff.
- Evaluate potential and existing suppliers using a standard questionnaire to identify competence, compliance with our values and standards and to ensure they are addressing slavery and human trafficking risks. This assessment is repeated periodically. The process is supported by our procurement policy.
Due diligence on clients and suppliers is undertaken through combining our previous experience of working with the organisation, our local knowledge of them and the information surfaced through the Exiger Insight3PM service. We cross reference information from these sources before seeking to contract with a supplier.
Risk assessment
The value we bring is recognised by clients and, as a result, it is accepted that we charge fair rates for the work we undertake and that we pay employees and suppliers fairly. As a professional services organisation, our risks associated with slavery and human trafficking are generally low, our professional staff have tertiary education are often members of professional organisations and command significant levels of compensation in line with market norms. Key areas of risk for us are:
- Low wage jobs, such as office cleaners and support staff
- Our commodity services supply chain, where unskilled labour is prevalent
- Our commodity purchasing supply chain
It is worth noting that, whilst we interface closely with the construction industry around the world we do not undertake traditional construction activities with the exception of the J N Bentley business in the UK. The J N Bentley modern slavery statement can be found here.
We manage these risks through our employment and procurement policies and through our supplier evaluation process.
Effectiveness of our approach
As the risk of slavery and human trafficking in our business is deemed to be low, we monitor the performance of our suppliers in supporting us to meet our policy commitment and the services they provide to us. We also monitor our own compliance with our employment and procurement processes. In addition, we are audited around the world by third party organisations both for compliance with our internal business processes and with quality standards. We are confident this approach is appropriate to managing our risks for our tier one suppliers.
Speaking up
We subscribe to the Expolink speak up/whistleblowing service and have strict processes in place to respond to all reports sent through to us. The service is promoted through campaigns within the company. It is accessible to anyone and reports may be made anonymously where this is allowed by the country the report is being made from. In 2018 we did not receive a speak up report related to modern slavery or human trafficking.
Training
We train our staff on ethics and compliance with our values, directives and processes. We also provide training on people management and communications skills and these are directly aligned with our PRIDE values. This creates a strong culture of tolerance of others, transparency in decision-making and mutual respect, that support our training on Modern Slavery and is available to all staff.
Progress over the last financial year has included:
- Establishment of a Global list of suppliers, with a procedure to check compliance of our tier one suppliers. This included the launch of the Exiger supply chain management system to enable us to interrogate and verify that we hold up-to-date and accurate information about our suppliers, and to check they comply with the requirements in our policies on MSA, ethics and anti-bribery, and divulge essential financial and structural information to us. By the end of 2018 we had run reports on approximately 3,500 organisations.
- Alignment of procurement contracts across the global business to detail the requirements in our policy against slavery and human trafficking. This requires that the purchase of consumables for our office facilities or for projects, and of the provision of technical services by suppliers to be subject to conditions of contract explaining the requirements for legal compliance to MSA and antibribery legislation, as well as performance requirements.
- Introduction of a new process in our business management systems to ensure that new suppliers are verified for compliance to our policies before they can be contracted to supply goods or services.
- In 2018 we planned to launch of a new on-line training course for our staff to learn about the risks of modern slavery and its possible effects on nearly 30 million people across the world, how to spot possible abuse of the law, and how to report it within the company. However, this was not achieved. The training material will be released in the second half of 2019.
Plans for improvements to our approach in 2019
- We will undertake a review of our approach to dealing with modern slavery and human trafficking making a comparison against the Act, the “Independent Review (2019) Recommendations on Mandatory Content” and the statements published by similar organisations.
- We will respond to Cabinet Office questionnaires and evaluations of our approach and look forward to being able to identify opportunities for improvement from the feedback provided.
- Review and identify how we can identify high risk second tier suppliers in the context of modern slavery and develop processes to ensure our values are understood by them and adopted effectively.
- In addition to publishing this statement on the Mott MacDonald Group website we will also publish it on associated websites to promote our commitment to this agenda.
Ian Galbraith
June 2019