BrazilMott MacDonald appoints new Managing Director for Middle East
The global engineering and management consultancy Mott MacDonald has appointed Chris Seymour as the new managing director of its Middle East operations. Seymour has nearly 30 years of project management experience, operating for the last ten across the Middle East region.
After joining the firm in 2016 as Regional Development Director for the Middle East and South Asia, Chris Seymour, who is also co-Chairman of the Middle East Council for Offices, will now serve as the Managing Director for Mott MacDonald in the Middle East.
Seymour has nearly 30 years of experience in project and commercial management, including a specialist interest in private public partnership, financing, procurement and risk management. He crossed to Mott Macdonald from fellow METRON design and engineering firm Arcadis, where he started out in 2000 as an executive director for their UK office, before moving up to Head of Markets and Development for the Middle East prior to his switch. Seymour has worked in most of the major cities in the region since arriving in 2009.
“Chris has made a huge impact since he joined us a couple of years ago,” David Cox, Mott MacDonald’s regional managing director for Middle East and South Asia, said. “He takes on this role at an exciting time of change and development in the Middle East, with many regional governments looking to honour their ambitious infrastructure commitments… With Chris’ broad experience and leadership, we’re looking forward to working closely with our clients in the Middle East to help them realise their ambitions.”
Regional footprint
Mott Macdonald has a lineage in the MENA region dating back to the early 1900s, when the company’s co-founder Murdoch Macdonald aided the development of irrigation systems in the Nile Basin. The firm now has around 1300 staff in the region (of a 16,000 total worldwide) across seven countries, including Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and Seymour in his new role will be tasked with further expanding the company’s regional operations, with a focus on energy, infrastructure and the built environment.
The consulting firm offers multidisciplinary project delivery services for its Middle East clients, including sustainable design and implementation, policy development, impact assessment and environmental risk management, in, among others, the areas of transport, water, power, health, education, and the resources sector. The design and build of Qatar’s showcase stadium for its successful FIFA World Cup bid and the provision of advisory services for the Madinah Airport of Saudi Arabia feature among the firm’s previous regional projects.
