Infrastructure

About Stuart

Stuart helps lead the global Infrastructure practice and the Strategy practice in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Before joining McKinsey in 1997, Stuart worked for five years as a barrister specializing in commercial and public law. In 1999, while on a one-year leave of absence from McKinsey, he worked for the British government as a senior civil servant in what is now the Prime Minister’s Strategy unit. In 2001, Stuart left McKinsey to serve as one of the private secretaries to The Queen, supporting and advising Her Majesty in her duties as Head of State of the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and ten other commonwealth realms.

Stuart rejoined McKinsey in 2005. Based in London, he now works extensively with clients in many geographies on a variety of strategic and social infrastructure projects. His major clients include:

• A large transport company, where he recently helped improve margins by nearly 40% through pricing, network and service rationalization, engineering efficiency, procurement best-practices, contractor management, and capital optimization;
• A multinational power company, where he helped undertake a comprehensive strategy review - including analysis of markets and assessment of the attractiveness of competing generation technologies,  supported a substantial merger, assisted with integration delivery, and helped improve management, maintenance efficiency, and trading of the combined portfolio of generation assets;
• A construction and engineering company, where he advised on a five-year growth strategy to respond to macroeconomic uncertainty; the project included infrastructure market analysis and prioritization, identification of core competencies and value drivers, and the implementation of a strategic planning process to help the senior leadership team pursue growth;
• A large mining company, where he supported on a variety of strategic, organizational, and operational topics, including: managing stakeholder-government relations and socio-political risk and building an understanding of the development needs of host countries and the delivery challenges associated with developing the country’s national power, freight rail, and port infrastructure;
• A major public-private partnership (PPP) responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of rail infrastructure, where he helped navigate a complex regulatory process to secure funding and identify savings opportunities in the maintenance function by applying lean and capital productivity principles;
• A number of government entities in Europe and further afield, where his role has included helping public and private stakeholders work together to plan and develop large-scale European infrastructure projects, and advising an Asian government entity on how best to address the integrated transport challenges of a major city

Stuart became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1989, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce in 1996, and a Fellow of the Royal Institution in 2010.

Past experience

Education