Mott MacDonald
Designing the system behind smarter land consent
The Challenge
Moata Consents Management is a digital tool we designed with Mott MacDonald to streamline land access and consent in infrastructure projects, from housing and rail to renewable energy. These projects rely on land, yet the people and processes tied to it are often treated as an afterthought. This disconnect leads to late-stage delays, costly risks, and growing pressure on already stretched delivery timelines.
We joined the product team at a critical moment, where complexity, siloed teams, and inconsistent workflows were holding back progress. Our role was to help reframe how land, consent, and people are integrated into the infrastructure lifecycle, and to create a system that could drive both adoption and trust across a fragmented landscape.
We redesigned the Moata Consents Management platform into a user-centred, collaborative workspace that aligns teams and accelerates progress.
Outcomes
The new interface simplifies regulatory workflows, clarifies data at key moments, and helps users, from landowners to planners, engage with confidence.
Strategic design and usability improvements helped unlock an additional £100k in funding for an accelerated discovery phase in 2024. In 2023, smarter land management delivered £6 million in savings for Mott MacDonald's clients. Two clear signals of the platform's value and momentum. By transforming how teams work across disciplines, the tool now supports faster, smarter, and more sustainable delivery of nationally important infrastructure.
We embedded deeply with the product team, running user research, workshops and co-design sessions with stakeholders across disciplines.
Through rapid prototyping and validation cycles, we refined critical workflows to improve efficiency and reduce ambiguity in decision-making.
Project Summary
Working in close partnership with engineering, we ensured that UX principles were integrated directly into development, reducing implementation friction and increasing velocity. Our focus on accessibility, real-time data visibility, and future-facing design systems laid the groundwork for a scalable, adaptable platform, built not just for today's needs, but for the future of digital infrastructure planning.