Enable Design welcome Paul Mountford as General Manager

Enable Design welcome Paul Mountford as General Manager

9 February 2022

Enable Design (formerly known as Equate Design), part of the Enable Investment Holdings consortium led by Enable Infrastructure (formerly known as BCM Construction), is delighted to welcome Paul Mountford as General Manager. Paul is responsible for the business development and future growth of Enable Design going forward as we aim to become the design consultancy of choice in the transport sector. With a current portfolio of survey and design projects focusing on rail, Enable Design are diversifying and expanding across transportation, with upcoming work specialising in EV charging in particular. Such new avenues are an important part of what Paul is leading on as transport technology and infrastructure continues to evolve.

Paul’s career began in 2005 upon completion of his master’s in mechanical engineering at the University of Manchester when he joined Network Rail as an engineer on their graduate scheme. After various placements across northwest England over the length of the two-year programme he then started as a track design engineer in 2007 where he worked on a design for Parkside Junction between Manchester and Liverpool. Part of the rationale for his deployment was to demonstrate cost savings of doing such work within Network Rail. This effort was a success resulting in him being tasked to coalesce a track design group based in Birmingham.  An endeavour that was replicated in 2011 for the Southeast region with a move to Milton Keynes.  These track design teams now form part of the Network Rail Design Delivery group.

This was where he remained, until 2015 when he left Network Rail as a senior track engineer to become an associate technical director at Arcadis, the global engineering consultancy. Ironically, upon joining he was then seconded right back into the Network Rail office in Waterloo which he had left just the previous week. He was then dedicated to a range of projects such as Crossrail 2, Feltham station, and the Reading to Waterloo platform extensions while with Arcadis. International assignments also followed with visits to Germany and India, the “broader horizons” of which Paul relished.

In 2018, he rose to become a technical director and became the framework lead on the Wessex multidisciplinary framework in conjunction with Osborne. His first taste at management across a variety of disciplines, not just pure engineering, Paul found the responsibility of having a high-level overview of a large, multi-million-pound project immersive and engaging. He also spent two years on a GRIP 5 development of Barking Riverside encompassing 2 kilometres of a new twin-track viaduct, a new station and 2.5 kilometres of network adjustments.

After six years at Arcadis, Enable Design came calling, with the opportunity for Paul to help shepherd the consultancy into a new era. Describing himself as “a chartered mechanical engineer, with a background in PWay, working in civils as a project manager” Paul illustrates the alloy of skill and experience that Equate Design sought for such a vital position to implement a long-term plan for sustainable growth. Attracting enthusiastic new staff is an important component of this growth, with the remit to seek out “driven engineers who can grow with the company”.

Another source of motivation is the entry into the EV charging market. Here he will work closely with the new Enable Infrastructure project manager for EV charging, Kit Lock, to springboard Enable Design into the emerging EV and sustainable technology field. In his view: “Enable Design has a proven expertise in civil and electrical design in the railway environment that is incredibly transferrable to other sectors”. With this collaboration and beyond, he is excited to see where such change can lead as he sketches out the road to make Enable Design “the partner of choice for sustainable technologies”.

Born in Stoke, in 1982, he now resides in Milton Keynes with two young boys and his partner of 10 years and Labrador, Cali. Passionate about martial arts and the NFL (American football) which he plays recreationally. His main interest outside of family and Equate is trail running and ultramarathons. He regularly runs over 30 miles a week, and in 2021 completed over 1000 miles in the calendar year!

We trust that Paul will help Enable Design achieve similar such impressive mileage on the journey to a flourishing future.