Young Member Visionary 2016/2017

The winner receives a place at the Essential Management Skills conference in 2017. They will be given the opportunity to engage closely with the Young Member Board over the year, and to join the judging panel for the Young Member of the Year Awards in the following year.

Matthew Marson IEng MIMechE is a Consultant at Accenture working in Connected Spaces. He has an MEng in Structural Engineering and Architecture from the University of Sheffield, and is part of a global team of consultants advising large companies on digitised real estate. He manages a local team day-to-day and oversees the output of a large European team. He was nominated for an Inspirational Leader People Oscar, an internal initiative with thousands of nominations.

Matthew is responsible for the design and delivery of a flagship built environment project – to create the one of the world’s most connected buildings. Human-centric design, advanced IoT technologies and sustainability drivers made the digital retrofit incredibly challenging. Location engines, connected lighting, HVAC analytics and a myriad of specialist sensors make this an impressive engineering feat.

He recently led the implementation of an HVAC analytics system across a client real estate footprint of twelve buildings across 2 countries, addressing 3m sq ft and saving thousands of dollars in energy and millions of kilograms of carbon.

“This is a new and interesting area,” explained Matthew. “If we consider how well analysed and fined-tuned  aeroplanes or cars are, then buildings are far behind and not nearly as well-optimised to their users. We’re now at the point where sensors are so cheap and cloud computing is so widely available, that we can really understand how buildings and their occupants behave. We can begin to measure, understand and improve.”

Andy Bush, Senior Manager at Accenture says: “Matt is an excellent team player. He brought an incredible innovation in the team and led analysts to grow their skills in IoT and connected buildings. He has great skills in coaching and collaboration resulting in a ‘happy’ team.”

He is responsible for the Corporate Citizenship initiatives for the analysts at Accenture. “All the 1,000 analysts in the UK have a three-day volunteering allowance and access to fund matching. I encourage the analysts to undertake placements under the ‘Skills to Succeed’ banner – helping people less fortunate to up-skill themselves. To date we have delivered thousands of hours of volunteering, thousands of pounds in fundraising and a very engaged community of analysts.”

Matthew has also been working closely with Engineers Without Borders UK since university. He helped them structure their strategy for the next 5 years. “I have been able to help them shape their strategy for enhanced success in the future. It is the intersection of engineering and business skills that have allowed me to offer value to the organisation.”  This has now been launched, and Doug Harper, the CEO thanked Matthew for his help: “Your level headed and professional input has been of enormous benefit to all of us and a necessary counterpoint to our enthusiasm!”

In 2014, he was part of a group that fundraised and did a fact-finding mission to rural Bangladesh to understand the impact of the VSO’s engineering work in order to use the story to inspire others to support the cause.

He was delighted to be selected as the winner of this award: “I am honoured to have been selected by the Institution for this prestigious award. It shows how important it is for engineers to engage with the built environment and appreciate the human element. Within Accenture we believe that people perform best when they work on what they love and are good at, the Corporate Citizen programme, for me, is an important part of helping people to do that.”

Matthew is keen to continue his development with the Institution and become Chartered. “I would like to drive the Connected Spaces agenda, and influence how we design and operate space in the future.”