John Foster

Global practice leader, dams and rivers
UK

Biography

John Foster joined Mott MacDonald in Cambridge from Loughborough University in 2002 as graduate hydraulics engineer. Initially working on river engineering work, John moved to irrigation projects across the world including Yemen and Ethiopia and eventually as a design manager in Pakistan, where as well as the design delivery used his time to develop local staff talent and capability.  

John moved into dams engineering designing and supervising his first reservoirs in 2008, which were successful habitat lagoons for Anglian Water. Progressing onwards to Dams resident engineer in Republic of Georgia for hydro power in 2014.   

John has over 10 years experience in a design and build arrangement with Mott MacDonald Bentley, delivering +£20M of reservoir safety schemes before setting up a dams, rivers and geotechnics team in Leeds, which is now over twenty-five people.  

In 2019 John was appointed to the UK's All Reservoir Panel Engineer for which he is particularly proud of and supports this industry in the UK through committee membership of the British Dam Society and ICE's Panel Engineers' Committees. As well as authoring the CIRIA industry guide on design of siphons through dams, John has written papers and presented at the BDS and internationally at ICOLD.  

 Since 2023, John has been the dams and rivers global practice leader for Mott MacDonald drawing on, and growing his network of colleagues he has worked with across the global regions and from his river and dam engineering experiences.