ATKINS CONSULTANTS LIMITED

Their core work

Atkins Consultants Limited is the EU project entity of Atkins Global (now AtkinsRéalis), one of the world's largest engineering consultancy groups headquartered in Epsom, UK, covering infrastructure, defence, energy, and transport sectors. In H2020, their specific contribution was in the domain of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) — providing industrial expertise, engineering facilities, and professional mentorship to European PhD training networks. As a third-party industrial partner in MSCA Innovative Training Networks, they host and co-supervise doctoral researchers, bridging the gap between academic EMC research and large-scale real-world engineering projects. Their value to research consortia is access to live engineering environments where interference and power system challenges arise at industrial scale.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Both projects fall within a tight 2018–2019 launch window, so temporal evolution within H2020 is minimal. The slight shift is thematic: SCENT (2018) situates EMC in the smart city context — urban density, IoT, and communications infrastructure — while ETOPIA (2019) pivots toward power electronics and EMI in energy systems. This suggests that Atkins' EMC/EMI engagement is not narrowly specialised but spans multiple application domains within the same core discipline. The consistent keyword 'interference' across both periods confirms a stable technical identity with expanding application reach.

Atkins appears to be broadening its EMC/EMI positioning from smart city communication systems toward power electronics — a direction well-aligned with the EU's accelerating electrification agenda in transport and energy.

How they like to work

Atkins participates exclusively as a third-party industrial partner in MSCA-ITN doctoral training networks — a role where they provide real engineering problems, professional supervision, and industrial placements rather than leading research. This is a deliberate posture common to large engineering firms: contributing credibility and real-world scale while the academic partners own the research agenda. With 24 unique partners across 7 countries from only 2 projects, they operate in large, diverse consortia, which reflects the typical size of MSCA-ITN networks rather than an unusually broad personal network.

24 unique partners across 7 countries from just 2 projects — a wide network relative to their project count, driven by the large consortium structures inherent to MSCA Innovative Training Networks. No repeated partner pattern is detectable from this data, suggesting open, project-by-project consortium assembly.

What sets them apart

What Atkins offers that academic EMC groups cannot is industrial-scale engineering exposure: real infrastructure projects, professional regulatory environments, and hands-on problem complexity. For consortium builders designing MSCA training networks in EMC, power systems, or smart infrastructure, Atkins functions as a heavyweight industrial anchor that gives PhD programmes immediate commercial relevance. As part of one of the world's largest engineering consultancies (now AtkinsRéalis, operating in 30+ countries), they also bring international network reach that smaller industrial partners lack.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SCENT
  Addresses the underexplored challenge of electromagnetic compatibility in smart city deployments — a timely topic as dense IoT sensor networks create novel interference environments in urban infrastructure.
• ETOPIA
  Bridges EMI analysis with power electronics applications in a PhD training network, directly targeting the skills gap in a discipline critical to electrification of transport and energy systems.