Inclusion Moment: Hannah Wight, Principal Consultant, Jacobs
Tuesday 16 September 2025
Event: Enhancing Value through Project Closure

‘Neuro’ relates to the nervous system – brain, spinal cord and nerves. 10% to 20% of people are neurodivergent. That means that their brains work in ways that are outside the norm, in one way or another. With statistics that high, it is very likely that some members of your team – whether your colleagues, your clients or yourself – are neurodivergent, even if you don’t know about it. And because of some of the strengths associated with various neurotypes, those numbers can be higher in some professions compared to others.

Some of the neurotypes you may have come across before include autism, dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia and Tourette syndrome. This isn’t an exhaustive list, obviously, but these are some of the most commonly known types.

But what does this have to do with projects?

Although we often hear about the challenges associated with the neurotypes, I want to start with some of the incredible strengths that neurodivergent individuals bring to project environments. It is often reported, for example, that dyslexic people have exceptional creative problem-solving skills and can think of things from many different angles. Some autistic people have laser-like attention to detail, and can spot tiny errors easily. Some people with ADHD are very deadline-driven – they can work very fast and intensively under tight time pressures. I’m sure you can see how these could be very valuable across a range of project scenarios. But when it comes to project closure, this is a significant change for anyone, and we know that change can have a disproportionate effect on neurodivergent people.

Typical workplaces already come with a lot of challenges. A busy office has lots of sensory distractions – there are always multiple conversations going on, there’s fluorescent lighting, you can smell somebody’s lunch from half a building away. It can be difficult to feel safe enough to speak up and say that these factors are impacting your work – especially if people around you don’t seem to be bothered by them, or if you already struggle with social interactions. All of these can contribute to low self-esteem for neurodivergent employees.

When change is added into the mix, one of the main reported issues is that routines and processes, especially anything that has been put in place to get around challenges, have to be dismantled and new ones put in place. If you think about what a project close-out can entail, it can mean a change of employer, or at least a change of office, and how you travel there; change to who you’re working with day to day; change to what tools you use or have access to. If you were used to a lot of meetings, it can also change the familiar framework around which your day is structured.

Some neurotypes also experience intense rejection sensitivity, or emotional dysregulation. So even when a change isn’t a personal rejection, it can be internalised in that way – especially, for example, if you are facing redundancy. Managing the associated emotions in a professionally and socially acceptable way can be exhausting, which reduces bandwidth for anything else. All of these factors pile up to create feelings of incompetence and overwhelm, over and above what we might expect people to feel when coming to the end of a project. We spoke to some of the people in the Jacobs Neurodiversity Group, which is part of our Employee Disability Network, to find out what people had to say about their experiences of project close-out.

The most important takeaway is that not everyone feels the same. Some people need to take a long time to let go properly; they want extensive, formalised handover to help with the transition. Others want to be able to switch immediately; once they know the project’s coming to an end, they’re already mentally on the next one. Personally, I put a lot of mental scaffolding in place when I’m working on a project. So having clarity about what the changes are going to look like – or what scaffolding I should leave up – and having time to mentally restructure everything else makes all the difference.

About the presenter

Hannah Wight, Principal Consultant
Jacobs

Hannah is a Principal Consultant at Jacobs, providing strategic advisory services to major infrastructure and transportation programmes in the UK and Europe, with clients including Lower Thames Crossing, East West Rail, HS2 Ltd, and the Copenhagen Metro. As a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Hannah is passionate about cross sector collaboration and taking an outcomes-focused, systems-thinking approach to achieve meaningful social change.

Alongside her work, Hannah is pursuing a doctorate in organisational psychology, creating vital connections between research and practice to contribute valuable insights on behaviours and business processes to the industry. Hannah is an active member of the Jacobs disability employee network, ACE, and its neurodiversity subgroup, collaborating with other neurodivergent colleagues to leverage diverse strengths and improve project and programme ways of working that are inclusive and supportive of different neurotypes.