BMT Defence Services, a subsidiary of BMT Group, the leading international maritime design, engineering and risk management consultancy, announced today the promotion of three key staff members, which will see them take up new and challenging roles in order to drive the business forward and meet its ever changing needs.

Shane Amaratunga, whose career with BMT dates back to 2000, will now be the head of naval architecture. He will be responsible for leading his team of world class naval architects and expanding the organisation’s independent offering of innovative technical designs and support services, both in the UK and overseas markets.

Simon Luck has been appointed head of information systems and assurance. Simon will build on the department’s reputation for offering first-class bespoke software, systems and services, and continue to offer truly exceptional software capability to the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) and other global, commercial customers.

Simon Kidd will take up the position of Head of information and communication technologies. Simon started his career with the company as an IT engineer in 1993 and is a chartered IT professional and Prince 2 practitioner. Simon has led a number of key internal projects focussing on the strict security compliance required by MoD standards.

Muir Macdonald, managing director of BMT Defence Services comments: “We continue to shape the company to meet our changing needs and these appointments reinforce this change. Shane Amaratunga successfully combines his in-depth professional knowledge of the industry with an acute business sense, making him the ideal candidate to lead our naval architects into the ever more demanding and exciting commissions we are now winning.

“Simon Luck already has much experience of our client-facing activity and is well-placed to help build our reputation in the market place for first-class bespoke software, systems and services.

“Ensuring a high quality and secure IT infrastructure is what Simon Kidd does best and was therefore a natural choice for the position of head of information and communication technologies. His knowledge and expertise will continue to play an integral role in providing the all-important information assurance which enables us to confidently remain approved by the UK Government to handle highly classified information.”