Stuart Watson Email & Phone Number

London, Greater London, Gb

Shape, prioritise and drive the Group-wide technology and R&D strategy and roadmap and coordinate the identification of Group level insights on performance threats and opportunities across all Centres of Excellence.• Develop the Rio Tinto Technology and R&D roadmap to 2030 to deliver against carbon, environmental, productivity, safety and growth imperatives and targets and secure Board and Group Executive support• Shape and architect the technology partner portfolio across universities, start-ups and established OEMs• Lead Group technology market intelligence on mine flowsheet development and its impact on incentive and cost curves for existing and new commodities and disseminate insights to Exploration, Ventures and Economics teams• Develop and drive the delivery of company-wide Innovation methodologies and channels including the internal Pioneering Pitch programme and the external facing Pioneer Portal to support the technology roadmap• Develop and implement commercialisation and Intellectual Property approaches for transformative technology• Own the Group’s technical metrics framework and value chain benchmarking systems• Shape and lead the development of the Group’s Integrated Operations Centres

London, Greater London, Gb

Development of Group, Product Group and key asset productivity and transformation roadmaps and coordination of best practice identification, stewardship and transfer across technical and operations teams.• Lead full potential assessments of assets across all commodities and shape the resulting transformation programmes taking into account macro-economic and industry cycles• Programme Management of the Growth and Innovation function (technical - geology, mining, processing, asset management; data analytics; consulting teams) to support global and asset productivity step-change• Global Process ownership of common Group value chain metrics and transformation processes and systems

London, Greater London, Gb

Developing business and product strategies for metallurgical coal, thermal coal and uranium and leading strategic transformation programmes.• Defining product mix and market positioning• Identifying and driving approaches to structurally lift productivity and capture increased margin• Line managing and leading application of new technology including remote operating and analysis centres• Inform and shape corporate views on industry wide cost compression opportunities and the impact on cost curves• Identifying M&A and divestment targets• Board member for Dalrymple Bay Coal terminal

London, Greater London, Gb

Managing a 5 person team to identify global M&A and divestment targets in thermal and metallurgical coal and leading the associated transactions (10-20 person teams).• Identifying business development opportunities in coal with a key focus on Australia, Canada and Indonesia• Leading the buy-out with a JV partner of minority interests in Rio Tinto’s coal business, Coal & Allied ($1.5billion)• Gathering market intelligence and developing supply and demand insights to inform cost and incentive curve developments in collaboration with the Economics and Markets team

London, Greater London, Gb

Leading the establishment of a new Group capability to develop short and medium run price forecasts and market insight for iron ore, coal (metallurgical and thermal), bauxite, alumina and uranium to support investment decisions and inform marketing decisions. • Responsible for development of ‘ahead of consensus’ bulk commodity market insights and perspectives across a 10 person team and communicating insights and forecasts to Rio Tinto’s CEO, CFO and Divisional Heads • Appraising the marketing and pricing components of all Rio Tinto’s bulk commodity capital investment proposals• Leading a group-wide programme to develop the framing macro-economic, societal and technology megatrends and scenarios to shape forecasting across all commodities to 2040• Developing the architecture and business case to ‘trade’ paper in the iron ore and thermal coal markets

London, Greater London, Gb

Leading the bulk commodity focused team remitted to drive application of internal and external marketing best practices within a group marketing improvement function. • Programme managing the planning and implementation of the commercial integration of Alcan’s Primary Metal business unit including defining and delivering $80million in auditable net cash-flow improvement and a $100million working capital reduction• Developing five year sales and marketing strategies for the Pacific and Atlantic based thermal coal businesses, the metallurgical coal business and the alumina business

Dublin 2, Ie

Led multiple consulting engagements at natural resources, petrochemical and oil companies in Europe, US and Asia. Engagements typically ran for 3-12 months with teams ranging in size from 5 to 40 people, required extensive industry, business and market analysis and had a value impact of $10-50million per annum. Sample projects:Supply Chain and Commercial Architecture for US Petrochemical major Developed process and systems design for supply chain, ERP and commercial architecture for a new world-scale polyolefin business and production unit - $200million capex, 200 people.Manufacturing Systems Strategy, Oil Super-Major Project managed and led the design and business case for a common Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for the petrochemicals division to address underperformance across business units in Asia, Europe and North America.Supply Chain Planning Systems Design and Build, Software House Project managed the fast-track development of a whole of supply chain performance improvement toolset for the oil and chemical industries using state-of-the-art workflow technology, linear optimisers and links to ERP system.Raw Material Sourcing, Global Intermediates Chemical CompanyProject managed multi-year procurement transformation for chemicals feedstocks to deliver a 5% spend reduction ($120million). Led $100million+ negotiations for several key raw materials delivering $30million annual savings.

Operations Manager on world scale high hazard chlor-alkali and vinyl chloride commodity chemical plant across a 50 person team• Responsible for the delivery of production, safety and environmental targets on • Bottom line budgetary responsibilities were for $60million variable costs and $5million of capital projects

• Technical development of world scale commodity chemical plant• Led a project founded on six sigma techniques to drive a culture change across a 30 person operations team to produce a step change in plant availability• Managed technical improvement projects ranging in value from $200k to $1million

Trouble-shooting, technical development and commissioning roles on plants across specialty and intermediate chemical plants across Europe and Asia with project values of up to $5million

Master Of Business Administration (M.B.A.)

Master'S Degree, Chemical Engineering

Master’S Degree, Chemical Engineering