Sarah Atkinson
Sarah is a business development director at Costain, where she focuses on providing sustainable solutions to transport and environmental challenges faced by local and devolved authorities. She is particularly passionate about carbon reduction and helping customers meet their net zero targets. Sarah has over 20 years of experience in creating solutions that make communities better places to live and thrive.
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Business Development Director, Place
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Business development
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Business improvement
Stakeholder engagement
About Sarah
Sarah's role within Costain is to specifically support local and devolved authorities by providing sustainable solutions to their complex transport and environmental challenges, and in doing so, help them create better connected and healthier communities. She's particularly passionate about carbon reduction and working with customers to meet their net zero targets. Projects and programmes across local authorities vary significantly, often crossing over multiple sectors. They will often start with feasibility studies and progress to programme implementation, which Costain delivers from start to finish, ensuring whole life cycle assurance. We have over 3,500 experts across all sectors within Costain who each bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to support all local authority programmes.
Sarah on the most common misunderstanding of her role
Many organisations view Costain solely as an engineering or construction company that designs and builds national infrastructure programmes. However, we also provide consulting and advisory services and work alongside many customers as a strategic partner in programme delivery and assurance, using our construction heritage and consultancy expertise to provide transformative solutions throughout the UK.
What led Sarah to her career
I studied Politics at University and have always been interested in how national and local politics impact UK regions in very different ways. My first job, when leaving uni over 20 years ago, was working for Glasgow City Council as a Project Manager to provide housing support to newly dispersed asylum seekers and refugees in some very deprived and vulnerable parts of Glasgow. During this time, I experienced the success of different community groups, the third sector and local government becoming galvanised, collaborating and supporting one another to help effect significant change in making these neighbourhoods stronger, happier and safer places for everyone.
My career, which also spans central government, has since focused on creating solutions that make communities better place to live and thrive.
Sarah on the biggest challenge in her role and industry
Within local government, the biggest challenges are undoubtedly reduced budgets and lack of resource, resulting in many local authorities being unable to deliver programmes at the pace required and sometimes having to cancel programmes altogether.
Sarah on how she thinks these challenges can be overcome
Unfortunately, reduced budgets are here to stay, however there is central government funding out there. Local authorities are sometimes not aware of all the funding streams, as the information can be very unclear, with extremely challenging deadlines. Often, there is not enough capacity to apply for the funding, as the process is very time intensive and local authorities are already over stretched. At Costain, we analyse all the funding streams and provide consulting support to local authorities throughout the bid process, as well as operational support throughout delivery.
A typical day at work for Sarah...
Lots of coffee to start the day, children off to school and then it’s straight into emails and responding to customers. I often have customer meetings, either over Teams or in person which involves a fair bit of UK travel. I work on a number of bids which can be pretty intense, but I absolutely love the teamwork and camaraderie that you get from working on tenders and being able to create pioneering solutions together.
I attend industry events to understand more about the challenges that are prevalent within local authorities and the transport sector, as well as to learn about the new approaches that are being adopted to meet those challenges. This helps me ensure the solutions that I’m presenting to customers are the best solutions for them and their specific communities.
A fun fact about Sarah!
My favourite thing to do in my spare time, besides gardening, is to start home renovation projects. This year it’s a two-story side extension and loft conversion.
Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn or alternatively send her an email.
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