From civil engineering and music studios in Portugal to leading large-scale infrastructure businesses across the UK, Joao Silva‘s career journey is a story of growth and human-centric leadership. In this career spotlight, he reflects on scaling organisations through periods of change and why the combination of Soben’s delivery expertise and Accenture’s technology capabilities represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the infrastructure industry.
At the heart of it all is a simple belief: great leadership starts with people.
Tell us about your career journey to date
JS: I was born and raised in Portugal, went to university there and got my degree in civil engineering. It took me a long time to finish because I’m also a musician, I was recording my first album and doing a lot of gigs, so it took quite a while.
My beginnings as an Estimator – After graduating, I moved to the UK and joined Network Rail’s general management graduate scheme, rotating through project management, commercial, project controls and engineering. I then spent a year in estimating before moving to Colas Rail as a railway estimator, and later to Faithful + Gould (the part of Atkins focussing on programme and project management (PPM) services), focusing on estimating for design services.
I was seconded to Transport for London, becoming Head of Estimating on the £250 million Station Stabilisation Programme, and later joining the much larger £16 billion Deep Tube Upgrade Programme.
My appetite to make a bigger difference – When my boss decided to leave, and I stepped into a business unit leadership role. In 2016, SNC-Lavalin acquired Atkins. A question came from Atkins to Faithful + Gould: if Atkins was so big in transportation, why was Faithful and Gould so small? My managing director didn’t have the answer, so he asked me. When he heard my answer, he put me in front of the CEO. I explained what was possible and said that by 2023 we would have a £25 million transportation business. Spoiler alert: By 2023 it was around £70 million.
Stepping up to the national stage – The business asked me if I wanted to lead PPM services transportation nationally. I agreed and gave up all my direct reports. It felt strange to be honest. Intellectually I knew it was the right decision, but emotionally it felt like giving up power and status. Despite that, it was one of the happiest periods of my life.
Finding the right platform to match my ambition– When I left Atkins at the end of 2025, my infrastructure-wide PPM business had grown to around 800 people. I was immensely proud of what we had achieved having gone from being a standalone director focused on business development to managing a £125 million business.
Eventually, I wanted something different. I wanted to build something that genuinely bettered the construction industry. When I heard about the opportunity to join Soben and Accenture I felt we could build something special.
What motivated you to join Accenture and take on the role of leading the Soben EMEA team?
JS: There were so many things that excited me about joining but my top three: firstly – the incredible potential of combining project delivery, entrepreneurial spirit and technology, secondly – the real-human led values, and lastly the awesome people I will be working with.
Incredible opportunity – Combining project delivery expertise and an entrepreneurial spirit with incredible capabilities in technology together gives me a huge amount of excitement and drive to draw on my experience of leading high-performance, fast-growing teams. What I can do well is scale a business really quickly. I know how to do it and I’ve done it before. Put all those ingredients together and it sounds like an amazing cocktail. It sounds like something that’s going to be delicious.
Real, human-led values – I felt drawn to the positive reaction to the principles that underpin how I see good business, which is very human-centric. I like to lead teams with compassion, camaraderie, entrepreneurship, curiosity, and lots of energy. I like to make things fun. I like good jokes, I like people, and I like making people laugh. When I talked about this with Maddie, Martin and Scott, I could see it resonated with them.
Incredible people – A lot of companies say, “we’re a people business”, but then act in a way that has got nothing to do with being a people business. My mentality is: if we say we’re a people business, we’ve got to prove it.
How do people feel working for you? Do they feel it’s worthwhile? Do they feel appreciated? Do they feel beautiful at work? Do they feel seen? Do they feel unique and valued? And I know that’s very important for the people I’m working with.
How do you see the combined strengths of Soben and Accenture are going to impact the infrastructure sector?
JS: The acquisition is still really fresh, so we are very much in the integration phase. But even at this early stage, the combination is exciting and already creating value.
Soben brings some outstanding, real-world project and commercial management capability – especially for a business its size, and that on its own is already hugely valuable. When you put it alongside Accenture’s unrivalled technology and data capability, you suddenly open up a completely different level of opportunity for how infrastructure projects can be actually run.
For me, the really exciting bit is the space in between those two worlds.
Today, most projects are still delivered in a fairly traditional way – project controls, schedulers, commercial teams, delivery managers – all working with multiple systems, dashboards, and reports. The technology might be there, but isn’t truly joined up in a way that actively helps people make better decisions day-to-day.
What we’re not yet fully doing, but absolutely can, is creating an intelligent layer over the delivery environment. A layer that pulls information together from across cost, schedule, risk, design, and site data, then uses AI and analytics to spot patterns, highlight risk and help resolve issues before they become problems.
If we’re willing to step into that grey area between delivery and technology – where Accenture brings the platforms and we bring the practical know-how of how projects really work, then the potential is huge. It’s how we can give clients far better visibility, far stronger control and ultimately much greater confidence in the outcomes of their projects – a real delivery partner.
And that, for me, is what makes this combination genuinely different and genuinely exciting. And if that’s not unique, then I don’t know what is.
How do you see the current state of the construction and infrastructure industry, and what do you see as its biggest challenges and opportunities?
JS: Construction is under more pressure than ever to perform. Governments and private clients are asking the industry to deliver bigger, more complex and more socially important projects, and to do it faster, greener and at lower cost. Yet, as a sector, we still have a long way to go. Across the world, construction is well known for cost overruns, delays and inconsistent outcomes, even though it plays a huge role in driving economic growth and national infrastructure investment.
The first major challenge is how the industry defines and delivers benefits. In many projects, benefits are set out in early business cases but are not actively managed through delivery. There is a significant opportunity to embed benefits and outcomes into everyday decision-making, so that choices around design, procurement, risk and delivery are consistently tested against whether they genuinely contribute to the intended value of the investment. This requires clearer ownership of benefits, stronger links between strategic objectives and delivery activity, and a culture where outcomes, not just outputs, drive behaviour.
A second major challenge sits in how risk is shared between clients and the supply chain. The industry still relies heavily on passing risk down the chain, which often drives the wrong behaviours. There is a real opportunity to move towards more collaborative models based on shared gain, fair risk allocation, long-term partnerships and transparent, cost-based approaches, that encourage teams to work together to solve problems rather than protect positions.
Finally, there is a major opportunity in how data and technology are designed and used to support delivery. Most projects still generate huge amounts of data, but very little of it is connected or used in a way that genuinely helps teams manage risk, cost and performance in real time. If we can better integrate data across projects and apply digital and AI tools to turn that information into insight, the industry can make better decisions earlier, and significantly improve how projects are delivered.
What’s a life lesson you’ve learned that you always carry with you?
JS: Don’t wear a mask, be yourself. Don’t presume that people like you more when you’re trying to be someone you’re not. You are absolutely beautiful the way you are, and you don’t need to pretend. Just do your thing.
I guess that’s the lesson I carry with me: I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not.
Looking to shape the future of construction? Join our expert teams delivering world-class services at scale. Explore our latest opportunities at www.sobencc.com/careers