Ramboll has appointed Simon Jefferson as Water Sector Lead for the UK and Ireland, a newly created role that positions the group to compete across two of Europe's largest regulated water capital programmes simultaneously.

Ramboll Group is a Danish engineering, architecture and sustainability consultancy founded in 1945, owned by the Ramboll Foundation and headquartered in Copenhagen. For FY2025, Ramboll reported financial results below expectations, with both revenue and earnings declining year on year due to a downturn in buildings and architecture and policy-driven delays in green energy, against approximately $2.7 billion in global revenues. In 2025, Ramboll acquired Temple, an environmental consultancy integrated into UK operations, and Envidan, which brought approximately 500 water and wastewater experts across Scandinavia.

Neil Sansbury leads Ramboll's UK and Ireland operations as managing director. Jefferson joins with 20 years of experience in senior commercial water sector roles, including more than a decade in a regulated water business; his previous employer is not disclosed.

The structural driver is AMP8's scale. Ofwat's AMP8 determination commits UK water companies to £104 billion of investment between 2025 and 2030, the largest regulated capital programme in the sector's privatised history, generating unprecedented demand for engineering design and advisory services from consultancies with water sector credibility. AMP8 framework panels and alliance structures require a named sector lead with both technical and commercial authority to engage at senior client level, a role Ramboll has now formally created.

The Irish angle is explicit in the appointment scope. Uisce Éireann's Infrastructure Capital Alliance operates a comparable framework model to UK water sector alliances, and a single Water Sector Lead covering both jurisdictions reduces the silo between UK and Irish client engagement, a structural advantage for a consultancy with existing Irish infrastructure credentials.

For Ramboll, the hire also addresses a group-level challenge: its 2025 results identified Environment and Health as a growth offset to declining buildings and architecture performance. Water is the subsector most directly underpinned by regulatory capital spend, making a dedicated sector lead an investment in the revenue stream most likely to counter the group's underperforming exposure elsewhere.

Source: watermagazine.co.uk / ramboll.com / news.europawire.eu / ofwat.gov.uk