Interview with Mark Enzer OBE FREng

Mark Enzer, OBE FREng, was born in Woking in December 1963. His father was a solicitor, his mother was a children’s nurse and they lived on a canal barge.

As a baby Mark accompanied his mother to a nursery school where she was volunteering: “My schooling was at least long, if not successful.” After that, he went through a number of different educational experiences, including a Montessori school.

 In 1970, Mark attended Hall Grove School in Bagshot, a private preparatory school, where he enjoyed science. At the age of 13, Mark joined Pangbourne College, a boarding school. He says of the experience: “I was one of the youngest in the year. In those days it was run along naval military lines, so we all wore uniforms and had to learn how to march.” As part of the school’s Combined Cadet Force, Mark also learned how to row and shoot old rifles.

At 15, Mark sat his O levels and then followed on with A levels in maths, physics and chemistry. He says: “It’s what you do if you’re going to be an engineer. Or what you do if you’re not very good at English, would be another way of saying it.”

Despite the lack of engineering role models in his family, he says he was the kind of kid who was always taking things to pieces and then not quite putting them back together again. “I covered most of the different disciplines of engineering by the time I was about 15, dams in the garden for civil engineering, bits of electrical engineering taking radios apart and trying to put them back together. That was more successful, I managed to get a radio to work. A bit of chemical engineering making things that go bang. Probably the height of my engineering career was taking a lawnmower to pieces and turning it into a go-cart. I think telling the story of the go-cart probably got me my place at university.”

After completing his A levels, Mark went to Pembroke College, Oxford University to study for an MA in Engineering Science. He says: “Basically, I just followed where the school suggested and ended up at Pembroke College.” In 1990 Mark obtained an MSc in Tropical Public Health Engineering from the University of Leeds and in 2004 gained an MBA from the University of Cambridge.

Mark’s first encounter with a computer was at Pangbourne College where he did computer science as an AS level.  He says: “The school must have been quite advanced to have a computer back then. It had some ticker tape to get it booted up in the morning, and quite often that didn’t go through right, and so computers seemed like very frustrating things.”

At Oxford Mark then used a VAX machine, he says: “It sat throbbing in an isolated box, and we all had to work on that. My memories were that it was terrifying and that nothing worked there either. Clearly, I just wasn’t coding things properly. But it always seemed like there was some kind of bug, something always making whatever it was I was trying to do not quite work.”

During a year out while at Oxford, Mark went to work with the Water Research Centre (WRC) and used Fortran to code on a VAX. He explains: “I did a bit of coding there which was actually quite fun. It was modelling a long sea outfall; this is where sewage flows out to sea. I had used a Runge-Kutta technique for some numerical modelling as part of my solution. I sent off my program to run over night, but it went unstable in the middle of the night, and apparently I used a load of CPU time. In the morning my manager said that under normal circumstances I would be fired because I’d used so much CPU time which was so expensive. So I guess that was a big lesson. Now, I’m sure that that same program could run on my mobile phone and cost almost nothing.”

Mark says that he was drawn to the water industry after his experience at the Water Research Centre. He adds: “I had a lot of fun there. After I’d moved on from modelling the long sea outfall, I got to play with some sensors measuring flow in flumes. It was just playing around with water. I also did a little bit of work on the early version of the sewerage rehabilitation manual which got me slightly closer to hydraulic modelling of sewers. So, by that time I had started down the route into the water industry. I had some kind of optimistic view of trying to do some good in the world, and it seemed like water supply and sanitation was a useful thing.”

In 1987, Mark joined Mott MacDonald as a graduate engineer. The company is a UK based company that operates globally. Since Mark joined, it has expanded from 400 employees to 20,000.

He joined the company after a colleague at the Water Research Centre suggested he would be best suited to a career as a consultant rather than a contractor and provided him with a list of companies that worked in the water industry.

He says: “I applied for five different organisations and did five interviews, but Mott MacDonald’s stood out as being the most friendly place. It was really on that basis that I went there.”

Mark has remained with the company for 36 years. Asked why he has stayed so long, he says: “They’re friendly and do water! It’s been really interesting to be with a company over a long period of time, doing many different things. Even though it might seem like staying with one company for that long means I lack imagination, I’ve been given so many different opportunities doing many different things. I have been seconded from Mott MacDonald into client organisations, contractor organisations, into government, and most recently into a university.  So it’s not like one organisation, it’s like many, with lots of different experience. So that’s kept me excited and engaged.”

Asked about the water industry’s difficulties of late, Mark says: “It’s complex. If we think back to what the water industry was prior to privatisation, it was also in a mess then, so there’s a little bit of history repeating itself.

“There were some very big changes to the water industry that were made in the ’80s, which were really beneficial, such moving to a catchment-based approach. It’s very sensible to  have water companies based around catchments.

“I wouldn’t want to really get into the rights and wrongs of privatisation, but one of the things which it lead to in the early days of my career was a lot of investment in trying to sort out some of the big issues of the time, such as coastal bathing waters. But the issues of the time always move on. I’ve lived through a number of the asset management periods and they all had different areas of focus, some of which were never even part of the thinking in the earlier times.

“Now people are very aware of combined sewer overflows, which effectively mean that when it rains you end up with a combination of storm water and wastewater going into rivers. The systems have been designed that way for more than a hundred years. It’s not a new thing, it’s just that it is now in the public’s attention and rightly so – nobody wants to swim in sewage in rivers. However, it’s not as if the water industry has suddenly started messing things up, we’re working with systems which were designed that way. So, we’re dealing with legacy issues. It’s good that we’re moving on and saying that this is no longer acceptable and we have to do something about it.”

As well as working in the UK, Mark has also worked internationally. He explains: “I was the lead for water internationally. The idea there was to identify good practice in one part of the world and take it to another, which seemed like quite a neat way of spreading good practice, but also spreading good business.”

Between 2009 and 2012, Mark was seconded to be Engineering Manager at Anglian Water, working in the @one Alliance. Asked about his management style, Mark says: “It’s definitely collaborative. That’s something that the water industry is very good at, particularly where a number of different organisations work together focussed on delivering outcomes. Ideally, I like to bring people together around a shared inspiring vision, and then encouraging people to get on with the stuff that they’re good at in pursuit of the common objective.”

Between 2017 to 2022, Mark was Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Mott MacDonald. He says of his role: “I moved from just looking at water to something much more cross-sectoral including energy, transport, water and international development. The main idea was about identifying good practice across all those sectors and sharing it. That’s something that I’ve been pretty keen on doing, not just within Mott MacDonald, but now more generally. Another thing that was happening within the CTO role was starting to drive a more common approach to digitalisation across the business.”

Asked how he did this, Mark explains that the strategy was key, and doing it with intention. The team found roadmaps to be a very effective way of driving change.  He explains: “Articulating the desired future state in quite a rich way so that we had a good idea where we’re trying to get to, being very honest about the current state, clearly seeing the difference between where we are and where we want to get to, and then working out what the steps are to get there. One of the things which I recognise in this kind of strategic approach and road mapping is the connection between a number of different streams because it’s rarely just a linear journey, there are a number of different parallel streams which need to work. Digitalisation is not just about technology and information; it’s about people. It’s always ‘socio-technical’, and so there needs to be  proper attention to human and organisational factors.  If people don’t adopt it, it does not work.”

This was the approach that was developed while Mark was seconded to Anglian Water where he was part of implementing Building Information Modelling. He adds: “We drove some very successful digitalisation in that context. So back at Mott MacDonald, we were able to come up with a clearly-articulated highly intentional strategy that covered the starting point, the end point and a number of different streams to get there, and the interface between the streams. It was, and continues to be successful. And I continue to use this approach now, although I might articulate it slightly differently now in terms of Three Horizon thinking.”

He says of complexity: “I don’t think that we should be scared of complexity; it is a real thing, it’s how the world works.  The world is complex, but there is a distinction between complexity and being complicated, and sometimes we humans make things unnecessarily complicated. Which leads into systems-thinking. It feels like there’s been a nice progression in my career that way.”

Today, Mark is a Strategic Advisor at Mott MacDonald, Mark explains: “I seek to bring useful strategic advice to add value to our projects and clients. There’s all sorts of interesting projects that I get involved in across a number of different sectors, including transport, energy and water, and so having a systems-thinking overview is very useful.

Mark is also involved in a variety of activities externally in the wider industry. He adds: “A thing which I’m particularly keen on advancing at the moment is systems-thinking at a national level across infrastructure and the built environment, because it feels like we really need to be more joined up now.

“We face a particular set of challenges that demand systems-based solutions. Let’s start by looking at the built environment as a system of systems. Within the built environment there is the economic infrastructure, our energy, transport, water, waste and telecoms, each one of which is a complex inter-connected and inter-dependent system.

“Then we have our social infrastructure: hospitals, prisons, schools, commercial, residential and industrial buildings, all of which depend on the economic infrastructure. And each of these has interesting and complex interfaces with the natural environment.  All of these layers add up to the built environment, which is this amazing thing that we live within, but we often don’t even don’t notice it, because it’s hiding in plain sight. It’s essential to society – society simply does not function without the built environment working.

“However, it’s now facing really substantial challenges at the level of the whole system. To achieve net zero or to provide climate resilience or, moving beyond that, to achieve a circular economy or protect biodiversity, cannot be solved in silos, because these challenges affect the whole system.

“If we want to address those big challenges we really need to be more joined up, more strategic and more long-term. The thing which I’m most keen on doing right now is to advance systems-thinking and systems change to address these big problems. It comes down to the fact that if we want to solve these problems, then we’d better do something different because what we have been doing obviously isn’t sufficient.”

Mark has also been involved in a number of cross-sector infrastructure projects. He explains: “I’ve been involved across sectors for a while, going back to the Infrastructure Carbon Review. That addressed how you can drive down carbon across infrastructure and it was a good way to identify the systems-based solutions which are needed to do that. Then my work on the National Digital Twin programme (NDTp) was also across infrastructure. In fact, the NDTp doesn’t make sense unless you have a systems-based view of infrastructure. Since then I’ve continued to develop an approach that is ‘outcomes-focussed, systems-based and community-enabled’. Those three things describe where and how I work. It has included developing a vision for the built environment, and more recently a shared understanding around the circular economy in the built environment.”

 “The outcomes focus is the route to go to get to the right answer. The starting point is working out what kind of outcomes we want and then relentlessly working together towards achieving those outcomes. Technology’s going to be part of the solution, but it can’t be just technology being the whole solution and then expecting humans to fit in with it.”

From 2018 to 2022, Mark was Head of the National Digital Twin Programme which was born out of a recommendation from the National Infrastructure Commission report called Data for the Public Good.

Mark says: “One of the key recommendations was that as a nation we should move towards having a national digital twin. That recommendation was accepted by Treasury and  the Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB) at Cambridge was tasked with driving it forwards.  I became associated with CDBB and was appointed as the Head of the National Digital Twin programme. Very early on, we defined what was meant by a national digital twin, which was  an ‘ecosystem of connected digital twins’ rather than one massive model of everything.”

Mark explains: “The potential of  an ecosystem of connected digital twins is amazing, because it can help us to understand systems better and intervene more effectively.  The whole idea is to make a connection between the digital and physical worlds.  Digital twins are particularly good at that, but there’s all sorts of other infrastructure which has to accompany it, like data sharing infrastructure, the connection into AI and robotics and the metaverse. All of these are that zone which makes a connection between digital and physical worlds, something you can call cyber-physical infrastructure.”

In 2021, Mark became Director for the Centre for Digital Built Britain.

Asked about why it is that public sector IT appears to have more issues than private sector, Mark says: “I’m not an expert in public sector IT, but I think big IT projects in general can very often go wrong. Perhaps, one of the issues is to do with the difference between rolling out technology and software solutions versus the importance of the information that underlies it. My experience over the past few years is that it’s the information which is what carries the value, and that the software and the projects which wrap around it are enablers. Sometimes I think we get it wrong when we do it the other way round and we think that what we’re buying is a solution when actually the solution is in managing the information better.”

Mark highlights that he could have realised more quickly the way that policy works. This realisation developed from his experience at the Centre for Digital Built Britain, he explains: “What I observed is that the way that policy works is not what I thought. I thought some very clever people come up with policy and then industry adopts the policy and everyone moves forward and the world becomes a better place. Now, I think quite often it’s almost the other way round, industry does something useful and interesting, and then policy backfits it, and that’s done so well and so neatly that it looks like it came first. If I had realised that earlier on, then I might well have done things differently.

“What it tells me for the present is that we shouldn’t wait until government comes up with a strategy for systems-thinking and then implement that policy. What we have to do is get on and do  something useful and interesting in industry, and then government will definitely pick it up and then it will become policy. The important thing is to get to the better outcomes, so in some ways it doesn’t matter who leads so long as it actually happens. I’m not pointing a finger and blaming anyone, I’m just saying that if we want to get to these better outcomes, then we’ve got to start. We’ve got to do some stuff, we’ve got to make this systems-thinking work.”

Asked about the development of AI, Mark explains that he not a part of the community who recently signed a letter calling for the development of AI to be halted or slowed down. Even if he were asked, he says: “I probably wouldn’t sign it, just because of the pragmatic point that, irrespective of who signs, it’s not going to make any difference, because people are just going to carry on and develop AI anyway.  Human behaviour is such that if we can do something, we will, and it doesn’t matter whose signature is on a piece of paper.  That horse has already bolted and humans will keep developing it irrespective.”

 Looking at the applications of AI, Mark says: “There clearly are loads, millions of use cases already, and each day people are finding more. I don’t think we’ll be short of use cases in AI.

“The thing I’m more interested in is how it will be integrated into other technologies, because I rarely see technology as being a single solution where any one thing is all of the answer. More what it seems, is that technology needs to be implemented wisely; it’s technology being integrated with other technologies that then ends up being more useful for delivering outcomes. Also, it’s not just about the technology, but about the information that the technology is serving. And then, most important, it’s about the people who are being enabled to make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.”

Organisations

Mark is a member of the Institution of Royal Engineers, Chartered Institution of Water and Environment Management, Honorary Fellow Imperial College London, Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers among others.

 He says: “There are some organisations that one has to join, and certainly as a budding water engineer, I had to be part of the Chartered Institution of Water Environmental Management (CIWEM). In order to get chartered as an engineer I needed to be part of an engineering institution, and as a process engineer I was halfway between chemical engineering and civil engineering, so I ended up joining both. So from quite an early stage I was involved in three institutions. The other ones have come and found me. I’m a reservist in the British Army, and as a result of that I get to be a member of the Institution of Royal Engineers.

“I am also a Chartered Scientist and that goes back to my engineering science degree. One of the benefits of that degree, although I didn’t realise it at the time, was it gives a very broad view of engineering, and engineering as a science.  So I came through as a scientist and engineer, with more of a leaning towards engineering because it’s more about application. But I think that it’s good to have a foot in both camps. Through the Institution of Chemical Engineers, I was able to become a chartered scientist as well as a chartered engineer.”

Interviewed by Richard Sharpe

Transcribed by Susan Nicholls

Abstracted by Lynda Feeley