Experience driven innovation

Wood Thilsted is a team of world-leading experts across every discipline of offshore wind engineering and we are already supporting delivery of over 8GW of projects across 4 continents. Our team are world leaders in their fields working together to create innovative, efficient solutions for our clients.
Working in partnership with our colleagues, clients and stakeholders we strive to constantly excel. We are international, inclusive and diverse. We believe we are already changing the world, but only through unmatched engineering and the very best teamwork can we deliver the full potential of the global transition.

Board

Carl Bates

Carl Bates

Chairperson

Alastair Muir Wood

Alastair Muir Wood

Managing Director

Christian Thilsted

Christian Thilsted

Director of Engineering

Alice Lawson

Alice Lawson

Stuart Robinson

Stuart Robinson

Directors

Mike Bell

Mike Bell

Director

Danny Bonnett

Danny Bonnett

Director of Special Projects

Ed Crammond

Ed Crammond

Director of Commercial

Ashley Hobbs

Ashley Hobbs

Director of Project Delivery

Robert Jones

Robert Jones

Director of OneTeam

Paul Knight

Paul Knight

Director of Quality

Brian Mackenzie

Brian Mackenzie

Technical Director

Johan Meincke

Johan Meincke

Director of APAC

Martin Nielsen

Martin Nielsen

Structures Technical Director

Matthew Palmer

Matthew Palmer

Director of USA

Amir Shajarati

Amir Shajarati

Technical Director

Paula Thomas

Paula Thomas

Director of Finance

Carl Bates

Carl Bates

Chairperson

Carl is an experienced business leader and advisor with a track record of driving growth and digitisation of professional services organisations. Over his career he has advised Executives and Boards on delivering change and growth strategies to increase enterprise value. Prior to joining Wood Thilsted in June 2022, to support the Executive team further scale its Engineering and Software capabilities, he was a Senior Partner at Deloitte where he grew a number of Deloitte’s practices over a 12 year period. Roles over this period included, leading Deloitte’s Analytics practice and establishing the Deloitte Software business that drove efficiency and effectiveness through the digitisation of Deloitte’s services. Before re-joining Deloitte in 2009, he was the Managing Director of Detica, a specialised Analytics and Engineering business, where, as part of the leadership team he scaled the services and software business to over 2000 consultants, before a successful trade sale to BAE Systems.
Alastair Muir Wood

Alastair Muir Wood

Managing Director

Alastair is a chartered geotechnical engineer with experience in design, management and construction of a large variety of civil engineering projects both offshore and onshore. He is also one of the two founding partners of Wood Thilsted Partners Limited. Prior to starting WT Alastair was leading the geotechnical detailed design of monopile foundations for all DONG Energy (now Ørsted) offshore wind projects. This included development of in-house design tools, and implementation of quality control and assurance procedures on all projects. It has also included obtaining project certification and third party approvals a large number of projects. From 2012 to 2015, Alastair founded and provided the technical leadership for the international joint industry PISA project, which will develop new design guidance for offshore piles specifically for offshore wind turbine foundations. Alastair is chairman of the steering committee of the Imperial College and University of Oxford research project ALPACA.
Christian Thilsted

Christian Thilsted

Director of Engineering

Christian has held key positions in the Offshore Wind Industry for more than a decade and has expert knowledge in effective execution of site investigations through to detailed design and optimization of offshore structures ensuring a holistic overview of critical activities across all phases. He has an engineering specialist background with an excellent academic track record provides the ability to apply engineering efficiently to optimize value and minimize risks of offshore wind farm developments. He has developed engineering software applied for detailed design of wind turbine foundations widely applied in numerous offshore wind project projects and has been a central figure in the industry pushing forward the technical development and quality processes with respect to design, fabrication and installation of offshore structures and cables.
Alice Lawson

Alice Lawson

Alice is an Assistant Director responsible for evaluating and executing transactions as well as for supporting the origination of investment opportunities. Alice was part of the team investing in Ridgewall, Detectortesters, Systal, Wood Thilsted and CMSPI. She sits on the board of CMSPI, Wood Thilsted, ITM and Systal. Alice also worked on our investment into Halo. Prior to joining Inflexion in 2019, Alice spent four years working in the UK Investment Banking team at Citigroup in London, focusing on UK M&A across a variety of sectors as well as completing both equity and debt capital raises. Alice holds a first class honours degree in Economics at University College London. Outside work, she enjoys playing and watching netball, frequently attempts to climb mountains and on occasion can be found on the ski slopes.
Stuart Robinson

Stuart Robinson

Stuart is co-head of the Industrials sector at Inflexion. He is responsible for sourcing, evaluating, and leading minority and majority investment opportunities across Europe in this sector. Stuart led our investments in Marley, Huws Gray and the subsequent bolt on of Ridgeons and originated Lane Clark & Peacock. Stuart has been a private equity investor for over 20 years. Before joining Inflexion in 2014 he was the Managing Director of the London office of US equity investor Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, and prior to that he was a Partner at 3i, investing in both private and publicly-traded companies. He has been involved in numerous transactions across a range of sectors including financial services, healthcare and education including Westminster Healthcare, Care Principles, Aspen Reinsurance, The Jelf Group and MPW. He holds a Law degree from Durham University. Stuart has a young family who keep him busy when away from the office. He enjoys gardening, getting out in the countryside and walking the dog.
Mike Bell

Mike Bell

Director

Mike is a chartered accountant with more than 30 years’ experience in the profitable development and sale of global service and manufacturing businesses, under both private equity and corporate ownership. Mike qualified at Grant Thornton in South Africa, moving to the Barlow World Group and subsequently Rentokil Initial before relocating to the UK in 2000. Mike is working at Wood Thilsted to strengthen the financial reporting, systems, and commercial focus of the group. In the 20 years Mike has been in the UK he has completed circa 40 corporate transactions with an enterprise value of more than £1,5 billion.
Danny Bonnett

Danny Bonnett

Director of Special Projects

Danny is a highly experienced structural engineer and manager, operating for more than 10 years within the offshore wind industry, and 25 years in the wider energy industry. He is very comfortable in a multi-disciplinary environment and has a broad appreciation energy client needs and drivers. He is the Director responsible for Offshore Structures within Wood Thilsted, and has focused recently on design for manufacture & installation and floating wind technology. Danny is working within Wood Thilsted to advance our thinking on sustainability, seeking ways to make our design output biodiversity positive, as well as managing embodied carbon down to below zero.
Ed Crammond

Ed Crammond

Director of Commercial

Ed has over 15 years of structural engineering design and major project delivery experience, encompassing a variety of onshore, heavy civil and offshore energy projects, with particular focus on offshore renewables. He has a keen understanding of design inter-dependencies within offshore wind and how these can be managed to maximise value for clients. Ed has worked on a wide variety of offshore wind projects in the UK, US, Germany and Taiwan and leads the Project Delivery division.
Ashley Hobbs

Ashley Hobbs

Director of Project Delivery

Ashley is the Director of Project Delivery, leading WT’s team of Project Managers and Project Administrators. He is passionate about continuously improving how we do things and finding new ways to help meet the challenges faced by our clients. Ashley also holds a variety of project roles as a Project Director, Project Manager and Design Manager. Through these roles he focused on facilitating effective collaboration between our delivery teams and our clients, helping to cut through complexity, balance risks and embedding project delivery best practice across our projects. Ashley is a Chartered Engineer and has extensive experience of managing complex projects in the offshore space, including delivery of designs for major offshore substations and WTG foundations.
Robert Jones

Robert Jones

Director of OneTeam

Having joined Wood Thilsted in 2016 Robert has played a key role in embedding the One Team approach as Wood Thilsted grew from 5 people to where it is today. An experienced Chartered Accountant, Robert brought with him a diverse background of Governance, risk and control from his time with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte. Today Robert is responsible for the wellbeing of our people, from leading the Talent Strategy, the IT and Data teams as well as delivering our ambition to become recognised as a company for good with B Corp accreditation.
Paul Knight

Paul Knight

Director of Quality

Paul has more than 20 years experience in offshore, urban and civil geotechnical projects including planning, site investigation, design, construction and project management. Paul has been leading the geotechnical development and design of offshore wind projects since 2009. He has considerable experience in client development strategy / support and risk management, geoscience desk studies and due diligence, offshore survey planning and execution, geotechnical interpretation and design and installation assessment of foundations, cables and jackups. Paul is experienced in software development and data management to assist with engineering design and processes.
Brian Mackenzie

Brian Mackenzie

Technical Director

Brian is a chartered engineer with over 25 years’ experience in offshore geotechnical engineering. His skills include site characterisation – ranging from regional reviews of geological conditions and associated risks and constraints for foundation installation and performance - to designing site-specific campaigns and leading subsequent detailed interpretation, all for a wide range of structure types and design environments.
Johan Meincke

Johan Meincke

Director of APAC

A geotechnical engineer by training I have spent the last 15 years working almost exclusively on offshore wind projects in various roles from detailed designer to site investigation specialist and to various project, line and commercial management roles. I have spent 10 years in developer organizations in interacting with decision makers, maturing sites and projects and taking them through all stages including early planning, maturation, construction and operation. I have a particular interests in geohazard identification and mitigation as well as geotechnical design optimizations and my expertise includes pile and cable installation, jack-up assessment, pile testing and design. I have recently returned to Europe following a 3 year expatriation to Taiwan setting up the WT branch in Taipei.
Martin Nielsen

Martin Nielsen

Structures Technical Director

Martin has +14 years’ experience in the Offshore Wind Industry and a very strong academic background within the field, as proven by an excellent academic and industrial track record. Prior to his current role as Technical Director responsible for maintaining and continuously improving the technical quality and competences in the structures department at WT, he has played a central role in R&D at Ramboll and held a tenue-track position as Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark. He is an industry leading expert within design driving mechanisms, optimal clustering strategies and complex dynamic sensitivity for monopiles and jackets and has played a central role in pushing forward the industry practice for integrated load analysis (ILA) with all major turbine suppliers. His professional deliveries cover all design stages - from cost-efficient bids for competitive auctions through to certified detailed designs – from which he has gained a solid understanding of how to reach the perfect balance between technical excellence and time optimized, risk mitigated solutions to ensure a cost-optimal design for the Client.
Matthew Palmer

Matthew Palmer

Director of USA

Matthew Palmer has over 35 years of experience in engineering, construction, operations, maintenance, development, permitting, and financing of various types of energy projects. He has been active in offshore wind in the US since 2001; he was a founder and the first executive director of Clean Power Now, the first US non-profit focused on offshore wind. Matt served as Project Manager for Engineering of Cape Wind and achieved the first federal engineering approval for a US offshore wind project. At WSP he started and led the US offshore wind business. He now is President and CEO of Wood Thilsted USA, manages the US business, leads all US business development and leads and grows the local US team.
Amir Shajarati

Amir Shajarati

Technical Director

Amir is a civil engineer with more than seven years of experience within offshore engineering. He has worked with structural analysis and design of offshore jacket structures for oil platforms and for more than 6 years he has been working as an offshore geotechnical and structural engineer performing geotechnical interpretative works of advanced laboratory tests and primary MP/TP design derivation. Amir holds a M.Sc. from Aalborg University where he extensively worked with the cyclic response of soils with emphasis on the design of suction caissons for wind turbines.
Paula Thomas

Paula Thomas

Director of Finance

Paula Thomas is Chief Financial Officer at Wood Thilsted and she is responsible for leading the company’s financial strategy, performance, reporting, and long-range business planning as well as stakeholder relations, treasury, tax planning, controlling, and audit. Paula is a Fellow Chartered Accountant with over 25 years experience in various companies in the Engineering and Manufacturing sectors. Her career has progressed in organsiations such as Stirling Dynamics, Specialist Aviation services, and Knorr-Bremse Rail Systems. Paula has worked in PE backed, Corporate and private businesses, through periods of rapid growth, complex changes and numerous global events. Paula has also been responsible for other areas such as purchasing, planning, supply chain, customer services, IT, legal and facilities

Values

Committed to a brighter future

  • Integrity for people
  • Integrity towards the environment
  • One team
  • Successful

Innovate

  • Be bold
  • Holistic
  • Push frontiers
  • Intelligent software
  • Be ambitious
  • Optimise and challenge
  • Work across diciplines in an integrated manner

Proactive Partnership

Partner internally & externally:

  • Trust each other & earn our client’s trust
  • Challenge but listen & respect
  • Be a team player
  • Reporting excellence
  • Culturally sensitive

Excellence in Delivery

Deliver:

  • Safely
  • On time
  • On budget
  • With quality
  • Openly
  • Global experts with local approach
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