July 18, 2025
By Nick Behan
Mark Southwell leads AECOM’s global transportation business, overseeing the delivery of complex infrastructure across regions and markets. With deep experience spanning consultancy, engineering and major project delivery, Mark brings a distinctive global view on how digital transformation, climate resilience, and AI are shaping the sector. In this conversation, he shares insights on the changes still to come, and the people, platforms and policies we need to get there.
Reflecting on your time in transportation, what’s been the most transformative change you’ve witnessed, and how has it shaped the way the sector operates today?
The biggest change is only just beginning. For years, we’ve heard buzzwords like ‘digital twins’ and ‘digital design’, but true end-to-end adoption has been limited. Designers embraced digital tools early, but their outputs often went unused by contractors and clients. That’s now shifting. We’re seeing a move from fragmented models to comprehensive digital platforms that span design, delivery and operations.
This is just the beginning of something truly transformative.
What do you see as the most pressing sustainability challenge in your area of the sector, and how is your organisation responding - through innovation, policy, or operations?
Climate resilience and adaptation is urgent. Around the world, from the UK to Australia and the U.S., we're facing the dual risks of too little water and too much. Droughts, flooding, and legacy infrastructure not built for either are becoming increasingly common. Our response has been to embed climate resilience into everything we do: reinforcing embankments, upgrading drainage, and integrating flood risk into transportation design.
But it goes beyond engineering. In the U.S., we're supporting disaster recovery efforts in communities hit by hurricanes and floods. Globally, we’re expanding our expertise in water engineering, a discipline in growing demand as supply struggles to meet rising needs. We're also guiding clients on sustainable materials, reusability, and carbon impact, making sustainability a core part of the value we deliver, not a bolt-on.
How do you balance commercial performance with the long-term imperative to become a more sustainable business, and where do you feel the biggest trade-offs or opportunities lie?
There’s a common misconception that sustainability drives up costs. In many cases, the opposite is true, if you get the design right. Reusing materials, optimising supply chains, and embracing carbon-conscious engineering often result in long-term savings alongside environmental benefits.
Globally, governments and clients continue to pursue net zero goals, and in fact, demand for sustainable design is holding strong. The opportunity lies in aligning commercial outcomes with these ambitions. While material costs, particularly for steel and concrete, remain a challenge, real innovation lies in doing more with less.
In places like New Zealand, low-carbon design is becoming a standard expectation. That shift, combined with smart procurement and a focus on whole-life value, is how we reconcile performance with sustainability.
Where is AI already changing the game in your organisation (or the sector more broadly), and what excites or concerns you most about what’s coming next?
AI is already embedded across the infrastructure sector, supporting everything from early-stage design and modelling to project delivery and internal systems.
Across the industry, we're seeing AI platforms draw on past data to accelerate tasks, helping teams work more efficiently and focus on higher-value problem-solving.
On the design side in particular, tools like automated modelling are significantly reducing delivery times, and we’re only scratching the surface. The next challenge is scaling these capabilities with clients while maintaining quality and consistency. The technology is ready, but adoption requires trust. Building that trust, through training, guidance, and responsible implementation is key.
Looking ahead to 2030, what single shift do you think will most define the future of transportation, and why?
The shift towards private funding will be the defining trend of the next decade. With governments under intense fiscal pressure, facing rising demands from defence, healthcare and climate resilience, transport must increasingly look to private capital.
We’ll need to reimagine investment models: from pension fund-backed infrastructure to new forms of public-private partnerships. This is already happening in other sectors and countries, with the UK, Australia and parts of Europe exploring more creative funding routes.
If structured well, these models can unlock long-term capital while delivering social and economic value. But it will require a mindset shift, seeing infrastructure not as a cost, but as a platform for growth.