MMB partnered with Murray McIntosh across contract and permanent hiring for engineering roles spanning infrastructure, non-infrastructure, reservoir, clean, waste, recycling, diversion and rising mains projects.

Before working with us, MMB was receiving excessive, often irrelevant CVs from multiple recruitment agency suppliers, with interview scheduling and time management adding further pressure on hiring managers. The process lacked consistency and was absorbing internal resource without delivering the quality or speed required.

MMB's hiring process was under strain before we got involved. Submissions were arriving from several agencies at once, most of them irrelevant to the brief, leaving hiring managers to sift volume rather than assess quality. Interview scheduling was inconsistent and time-consuming, and without a single point of ownership, the process drifted between projects rather than following a repeatable standard. The result was significant internal effort for a slower, lower-quality outcome.

We started by meeting every relevant stakeholder to understand the challenges and expectations behind each hire, rather than working from the brief alone. Job specifications were revised for clarity, and we fed in market and competitor insight to support MMB's decision-making throughout.

We ran a benchmarking exercise on water engineer rates, packages and benefits to keep MMB competitive in a resource-constrained market. The submission process was refined to raise relevance and cut volume, interview stages were adapted for efficiency, and we took ownership of offer management and onboarding to reduce drop-out. Once proven, these improvements were standardised across the full range of projects we support, giving MMB a consistent, controlled process rather than one that reset with every hire.

Over three years, that approach delivered 56 placements across a broad range of technical disciplines, cut time to hire by an average of six weeks, and held CV-to-interview submissions at a tight 2:1 ratio, proof that fewer, better-matched candidates outperform volume.

For more than a decade, Murray McIntosh has been at the forefront of water-sector recruitment, supporting water companies, tier providers, SMEs and suppliers with the skilled professionals they need to deliver.

We have an unrivalled understanding of the pressures facing the industry: tightening regulatory demands, ageing infrastructure, environmental expectations, and the intensifying workforce challenges of AMP cycles. Because our water team work exclusively in this space, we know where the talent is, how to engage it, and how to overcome the structural hiring barriers unique to the water sector. By working as an extension of our clientsteams, we help build realistic, long‑term workforce strategies that address the skills shortages affecting the water sector. 

As trusted specialists, and active members of AquaFed, Future Water, and the Institute of Water, we combine deep sector knowledge with a modern, data‑driven approach to recruitment. Murray McIntosh is the partner the water industry relies on today, and the one shaping its workforce for tomorrow.