Read about our President's Award finalists: Planet Award finalist, Ray Knight, Head of Sustainability Services, Atos
Ray Knight does not treat sustainability as a reporting obligation or a reputational exercise. For Ray, Head of Sustainability Services at Atos, it is an engineering challenge, a leadership challenge and, ultimately, a delivery challenge, and he has spent years working to make it a repeatable part of how Atos operates and how its customers benefit.
His internal contribution at Atos has been sustained and wide-ranging. As a founding member of the company's Responsible Business Forum, he has ensured that sustainability considerations are now embedded in investment decisions rather than reviewed after the fact. He leads Atos's internal environmental network, convenes hackathons with customers and suppliers, and has championed net zero and circular economy thinking at executive level, helping to shift sustainability from a side initiative into a core operating principle.
The clearest example of that ambition made real is Atos's work with DEFRA. Serving 30,000 colleagues across the department and its arm's-length bodies, Ray has championed a sustainable digital workplace built around circular principles: analyse, automate, refurbish and repeat. A refurbished-by-default device approach, combined with a performance-based refresh model, reduces carbon and e-waste while maintaining the high standards of service that a major government department requires. Where new devices are unavoidable, a partnership with Circular Computing ensures refurbished hardware is the default. Analytics and automation shift problem resolution earlier in the cycle, reducing reactive ticket handling and cutting avoidable device replacement. As DEFRA's Director of Group Infrastructure and Operations, Edd Parry, has noted, this work has set new standards for government IT, combining reliable service, an uncompromising user experience and sustainability performance that the public sector can be proud of.
Ray Knight's contribution is the demonstration that net zero commitments and high-quality digital services are not in tension. They can and should be built together, and his work with DEFRA is the proof point.
Click the image below to learn more about Ray:
Ray Knight
Head of Sustainability Services, Atos
Ray Knight
Head of Sustainability Services, Atos
Nomination reason:
Ray was nominated for making sustainability a repeatable operational reality rather than a corporate commitment, most concretely through the DEFRA end-user services transformation, where a refurbished-by-default device strategy and automation-led support model now serves 30,000 colleagues across DEFRA and its Arm's Length Bodies. By establishing a partnership with Circular Computing and embedding performance-based device refresh, he has reduced both carbon emissions and e-waste while maintaining service quality. Internally, he leads Atos's environmental network, co-founded a Responsible Business Forum to embed sustainability into investment decisions, and has extended his influence into customer and supplier communities through hackathons and community action.
Biography:
Ray Knight is a senior sustainability leader at Atos, specialising in digital decarbonisation and sustainable IT transformation. He helps organisations embed data-driven approaches to reduce emissions through implementing new technology, delivering measurable business value. Deeply convinced about the role of digital innovation in achieving net zero, he also champions collaboration, and skills development.
To read more about the techUK President's Awards, visit our page here. Winners will be announced at the techUK Annual Dinner on 30 June.
