EMMA
AI Transformation, designed and delivered for Mott MacDonald
The Challenge
Mott MacDonald set out to embed AI across its global operations — 20,000+ employees, decades of knowledge, and no clear place to start. Generic tools like Microsoft Copilot felt too broad, too disconnected from civil engineering’s specifics, and too expensive at scale.
What the organisation needed wasn’t another AI overlay. It needed a product — and a partners — that could define the opportunity, ground it in reality, and deliver something valuable fast.
We designed and built EMMA with Mott MacDonald: a secure, search-first AI assistant tuned to the way engineers think, work, and share knowledge.
Outcomes
EMMA surfaces not just documents, but decisions. Not just names, but trusted voices, all from within the organisation’s own systems.
The impact was immediate. Practice teams began curating their own sources, improving accuracy and governance. Within two weeks, 25% of the workforce had adopted EMMA, a clear signal that it was solving real problems.
Today, EMMA continues to power faster onboarding, expert discovery, and automation across teams, all without relying on external AI providers. It’s more than a tool. It’s a capability.
I really value the trust we have built over the years and I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes us.
Nasrine Tomasi
AI Programme Lead at Mott MacDonald
We started by validating over 100 potential AI use cases and aligned with Mott MacDonald on the highest-impact starting point: intelligent search.
From there, we defined the product vision, designed a UI engineers could trust, and shipped a fully governed v1 in just eight weeks — fully integrated with internal systems and Azure security.
Project Summary
We didn’t stop at launch. Working as embedded product partners, we built feedback loops into the rollout, partnered with practice leads to refine and scale domain-specific intelligence, and shipped v2 with performance upgrades and new features.
EMMA is now a model for how to do AI right, grounded in trust, built from the inside out, and shaped by the people who use it.
