About Imhotep
Hard problems are tangled, cross-functional and resistant to the usual playbook.
How we think
Where we are coming from
Coastal engineering
Structured thinking across highly diverse information and stakeholders, to build developments that can be operated and maintained for decades.
Lecturing
Communicating complex ideas in bite-sized chunks, while also checking understanding.
Management consulting
Seeing the same sorts of problems across the public sector and private industry — siloed thinking, individuals looking after their little kingdoms, struggles to understand progress towards a goal — and exposure to a range of solutions: challenge across groups, encouraging team-first thinking at senior levels, understanding what is actually important.
Start Up
The need to quickly flex after understanding what customers really want and are willing to pay for, and the big difference small, thoughtful changes can make to product quality and customer experience.
2004
Graduated Imperial College London
MEng Civil Engineering
2004 - 2011
Coastal Engineer, Arup
Infrastructure and development projects across the UK, the Caribbean, and the Middle East.
2011 - 2016
Senior Engineer, Beckett Rankine
Led projects for organisations large and small; in-house subject matter expert for planning in UK coastal waters.
2016 - 2018
Lecturer, UCL
Fluid mechanics, and Design & Professional Skills.
2019 -2021
Management Consultant, Moorhouse
Project delivery for public sector, telco, and infrastructure clients.
2021 - 2025
Partner, Sigma Labs
Created and led the hiring function for a large-scale graduate training programme, working closely with the CEO.
2026
Imhotep founded
To help organisations understand and overcome problems, and build more sustainable, effective structures.
Matthew the person
Like a typical engineer, Matthew loves to know how things work, but unlike the stereotype he extends the question to ask "How do people work?" and "How do we work?" There is no limit to which subjects he'll consider. It's full-time and permanent. Pray for his wife.
Like many, sport is Matthew's primary distraction, but unlike most, Matthew doesn't stick with the more popular British sports such as football, cricket or rugby (though he does write a Substack on the latter). Raised on a weekly diet of Trans World Sport and Sunday paper sports pull-outs, he is always open to learning about a new sport and the people who play it. His brain is largely unavailable during the Olympics, as it constantly downloads scorelines and storylines after another four-year absence.
Having never been a reader during his childhood (apart from the aforementioned sport pull-outs), Matthew started to read regularly after graduating. Mostly non-fiction, he has (very) slowly absorbed books on history, social science, travel, and the odd biography. There has been a little fiction mixed in, but he keeps coming back to the same question — how do we work?
More recently, podcasts have become an extension of his literary learning. Often, hearing someone explain their thoughts allows you to pick up on things that may never have made it to print, or were lost under a deluge of other points. Podcasts add richness to learning, and it pulls Matthew in over and again.
Matthew has several hobbies (making things, movies, travel, baking), but none of the above is as precious to him as his family and faith. Faith and family are why he discovered many of his interests, and underpin what he thinks is important. Indeed, though Matthew gives the impression of someone comfortable going it alone, his greatest wish is to share the world he has discovered with his wife and children.
What that means for you
All of which is to say: when Imhotep looks at your problem, it's never looking at it in isolation. You get the benefit of someone who processes a wide range of information — across sectors, disciplines, and levels of detail — and knows how to hold all of it clearly enough to see what it actually adds up to. Someone who has spent a lot of time, often for no reason except curiosity, working out how things and people work, and what's likely to happen when you change them. That's not a personality quirk we mention for colour. It's most of the job.