Date: Tuesday 25 March 2025

Interviewed by: Elliot Chase

Read the full article on i-FM.net here.

Macro’s newly appointed associate director global sustainability is a true believer.

Attiya Khan is one of those rare people who always knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.  “When I was 13 years old,” she says, “I already knew what degree course I wanted to do. From that young age I was very concerned about the planet – I used to watch Blue Peter and I had a National Geographic subscription: I was very upset about endangered species such as pandas and dolphins, and about deforestation.  These things would keep me up at night. I was genuinely worried about indigenous tribes in the Amazon.”

At about the same time that Khan was watching Blue Peter, the concept of sustainability was finding its way into the general consciousness with the meaning we recognise today.  She may not have been ahead of her time, but she was certainly right in tune with it.

“I felt strongly that I wanted to know more about our environment,” Khan explains, “so my career progression started down the academic route.  My first degree was a BSc in environmental science, then a Master’s in environmental and earth resources management.  Then, thinking I still didn’t know enough to make a real impact, I applied for a PhD studying the impact of climate change on the African great lakes.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get the funding - and at that point my dad sat me down and said ‘you need to get a job’.” 

Joining the ‘real world’
So began a round of meetings with recruiters, interviews and rejections.  A good part of that process was within the largely male-dominated construction industry.  “But then I interviewed at Carillion, and we just clicked,” she recalls. “It probably helped that the interviewer, and my manager-to-be, was a woman.”   In any case, Khan describes the 11 years spent at Carillion (well before its collapse in 2018) as “the best of my career in terms of learning and delivering on sustainability. That’s where I got a lot of my experience around sustainability management in construction and in facilities management, working in the government sector, hospitals – I was the sustainability lead for the government and healthcare sectors at one point, working on their Sustainability Excellence Model.  I then added private sector experience, working with banks, power stations, insurance firms and office-based businesses.  It was a nice playing-field for me – I had the opportunity to work on some award-winning projects, too.  It was a great time to be involved.” 

For Carillion, Khan designed mobilisation processes, set up their sustainability management process and helped to introduce new tools and solutions.  At the time, she says, the business was a sustainability leader. 

Moving on
“But,” she continues, “I just felt that after 11 years it was time for a change. I’m a very creative person; I love to be challenged, and I love solving problems. I wanted to go somewhere and start from scratch to build something new.”

That opportunity came about when Khan was headhunted for a role a Mitie.  “When I joined in 2017, they had little more than a sustainability policy statement, but a great offering around energy.  But my manager was very ambitious in this space and I feel he gave me many creative freedoms on corporate sustainability and developing consultancy solutions,” she recalls.  “Within the first year we picked up our first sustainability award, as well as the SFMI Rising Star award.  And when I left five years later, we had a display cabinet full of sustainability awards and certifications.  I came away really pleased with the influence we were able to grow there – the team was very effective, and it became part of the company’s core services.  I like to think a large part of that was people like us empower others to own sustainability, to go away and make sustainable decisions themselves in their departments, and I feel that is how an organisation can truly embed sustainability.” 

But after five years, Khan was again beginning to feel it was time to move on. “I had built new products and solutions such as Scope 3 emission services and plastic elimination frameworks; we had grown in numbers and in influence; and I’d established a Future Sustainability Leaders network with some amazing internal talent.  It felt Mitie really was at the forefront of net zero and decarbonisation - following the Paris Agreement in 2016, they really had become a partner of choice for our customers.” 

Stepping back for a moment, she adds: “The way I like to think about my role is, if I don’t come to work and just disappear, will the company keep on doing the work without me?  And sustainability became so established at Mitie that they really didn’t need me anymore.”

And at that point, she was headhunted once again to be head of sustainability advisory at ISS.  “I had a really good two years and am so proud of the Decarbonisation Pathway model I built here,” Khan says.  “When I joined, I had a team of three; and when I left, I had a large team of competent specialist sustainability consultants.  I was, and am still, really proud of the capabilities we created at ISS - from circular economy and decarbonisation through to implementation and management of management systems for clients such as ISO14001 and ISO50001.  We also supported ISS when expanding into the UK government sector and got to achieve a number of firsts for the organisation – for example, solutioning logistics emissions associated with our supply chain at account level and developing a Biodiversity Framework based on COP15.” 

New role, new opportunity
So, having helped ISS capitalise on the consultancy opportunity – and contributing to building an operation that was producing millions of pounds of revenue through energy and wider sustainability consultancy services – Khan was headhunted yet again for her current role as associate director global sustainability at Macro. “This is a new role,” she explains. “In fact, many of the roles I’ve worked in have been newly created firsts.  Here at Macro, the company needed to develop its own sustainability resources following the MBO from Mace.  So initially my role has focused on our corporate sustainability; making sure that we remain on the various sustainability indices and are able to continue to bid for work – the bread & butter part of the job, in other words.  Then to enhance our sustainable procurement strategy and our social value campaigns.” 

Khan is confident that Macro’s leadership has a real focus on sustainability and the ambition to put the necessary resources in place.  “It’s another opportunity to shape a really good solution to a challenge,” she says.  “It’s early days, though (she joined in November last year), and everyone is on a journey - so we need to shape our current ambitions to that.”

There’s an added dimension to the role at Macro, too, in that the company operates internationally across 40+ countries.  “Much of my experience has been in working within the UK,” Khan notes.  “The legal requirements for reporting for most of my past client work have been the requirements set in the UK.  Now, the challenge is other geographies – for example, with the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement again, our US clients will see much less ‘official’ pressure on environmental accountability.  We will have to be aware of and work within the regulatory differences that exist in the countries where our clients are based. I‘ve been talking to our colleagues in the Middle East, too, for example, to understand the context and the requirements there.” 

She continues with an important ‘but’: “Much of sustainability performance comes down to investor expectations; what we might call ‘good’ performance can be driven by investor pressure. 

“I have been working in sustainability for just over 20 years.  In that time, I have seen peaks and troughs in support and enthusiasm of the regulatory climate.  Recently, it has been somewhat concerning even in the UK, which not so long ago was seen as a leader on these issues.  In past roles, I was part of teams that were developing policies and programmes aligned to the UK government’s policies and programmes; but more recently it has been a little harder to judge the strength of commitment to published plans.  That can make our role as external consultants more challenging – can we advocate for change when we’re unsure how much support for change there is going to be? 

“But you can’t underestimate the power of investors and consumers.  In fact, a lot of regulation has come about because of the power of investors and consumers asking for change.  The various benchmarking regimes – for example, the FTSE4Good and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index – really are the benchmarks for large organisations.  And if they align to those values and commitments, that works to bring their business partners and suppliers along on the journey.  I see my role as making sure that Macro is on the right side of the ethical story.” 

Khan explains that her current job is to grow the sustainability offering at Macro: “I’m here to help build something unique to Macro, something that meets both the needs and expectations of this business and those of our clients.  One big value for clients in coming to an FM partner for sustainability is that we can give you knowledge transfer from a range of industries through our exposure across our clients; and since we manage our clients’ buildings, we can give them targeted support – it’s a lot faster for us to engage key decision-makers on energy, landscaping, procurement, waste, M&E, for example, and facilitate change more efficiently.” 

Explaining the opportunity further, Khan adds: “Often client organisations might need support with their own corporate accounting and reporting on sustainability and decarbonisation, with behavioural change and engagement programmes, access to learning materials, managing their sustainability KPIs and commitments around waste, circular economy, recycling rates, reducing food waste. In parallel, there’s also the need to understand where clients are: do they have the expertise, do they have an in-house team and/or service partners they are working with?   And if they are working with external partners, what is the quality of the support they have been receiving?” 

Summing up, Attiya Khan says: “My priority is always to put quality and pride into the work we are producing.  That’s the basis of longevity in client relationships.   For me, it can’t just be about cost; it has to be about value and the quality of the service the client receives.”  Couple that attitude with the increasingly important role of sustainability policies and programmes, and Macro must be on to a winner with its most recent senior team appointment.