Interview: PA Consulting, UK IT Industry Awards finalist

'Opportunities lie in leveraging agentic AI, enhancing cybersecurity frameworks, and driving AI - enabled transformation for our clients.'

This month sees the return of the UK IT Industry Awards.

The UK IT Industry Awards are the largest and most well - known event in the technology industry calendar. Owned and operated by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and Computing, the awards enjoy a level of professionalism and industry knowledge not seen at other shows.

This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday 12^th November in London.

PA Consulting is a finalist in IT Leader of the Year category.

We talked to Russ Fry, Head of IT for PA Consulting, to find out more about the company's biggest challenges and achievements over the past year.

Russ Fry is an accomplished technology leader for one of the most interesting consultancy firms on the planet! With a strategic focus on business change and enabling consultants to deliver their best work, Russ leads enterprise - wide initiatives that modernise systems architecture and drive operational efficiency.

Why do you think awards like the UK IT Industry Awards matter?

The UK IT Industry Awards celebrate the achievements of individuals and teams delivering exceptional results for the organisations they support.

IT is critical to how firms operate and grow, yet much of the effort happens behind the scenes. The industry often struggles to spotlight the everyday contributors whose work enables exceptional outcomes, leading to under - recognition and missed opportunities to celebrate success.

In my view, these awards address this problem by helping raise the profile of our work by publicly recognising our achievements and validating our contributions through the judgement of industry peers.

What would winning this award mean to your company?

Winning would be a proud moment for myself and our IT team, reinforcing our commitment to innovation, engagement, and inclusion. It was only two years ago that one of the team, Karen Byer, was awarded for the impact she made by winning the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion award at the UK IT Industry Awards, so we have history!

At PA we believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future. That future can only become reality through us working with our clients to combine innovative thinking and breakthrough technologies. The IT team's principal focus is on giving our people the platforms and tools that assist them in delivering insight and impact for our clients.

What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?

That's a hard question to answer when there's so much to be proud of. My team have been driving safe AI adoption throughout the organisation, ensuring we're at the forefront in terms of delivering outstanding client value. For example, we've supported tooling solutions that are being used with clients like our work with Sellafield, who handles the UK's nuclear waste. The PA team built an agentic solution that helps engineers solve complex issues and get answers quickly and efficiently. The project recently won several awards including from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and at World AI series for best use of AI in energy & utilities.

What have been the biggest challenges of 2025 so far and how have you overcome them?

Sorting the wheat from the chaff when it comes to AI capabilities and the impact the technology can have on organisations is front of mind for many of our clients. We're seeing conflicting messages daily: "AI is secure, and we should just trust it," vs. "AI poses major risks". The solution is to invest in governance, by the way. There's "AI will replace jobs", and the next moment companies are re - hiring when the tooling fails to deliver on the promise. The list goes on and on.

Clients come to PA because we bring together diverse teams of experts with the skills and experience needed to solve their challenge. For example, we have experts in Human Insights that can get to the bottom of their customer's needs. We have AI, analytics, and data scientists to move beyond automation possibilities to augmenting human intelligence. And we have a dedicated People and Change capability to ensure the adoption of these investments.

How do you think the industry has changed over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

We've started to turn the corner on the need to invest in cyber security, at every level of organisations. Whilst unfortunate for some of the household names we're all familiar with being victims of large - scale cyber incidents, these have made IT professionals question even more when they're asked to be part of change initiatives that could lead to negative outcomes. Developers now understand the true value of building security controls and governance in from the start rather than bolting - on at the end. We're seeing greater awareness of threats that are borne through email and people being more accepting of using biometric data that not only improves security but can often speed things up.

But we can always do more. I'd love to see more women - like my three daughters - enter the profession. Their perspective can help make IT security more intuitive and accessible, driving real progress in how we guide and protect users in a transforming digital world.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming year? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

Opportunities lie in leveraging agentic AI, enhancing cybersecurity frameworks, and driving AI - enabled transformation for our clients. Our groundbreaking work with Intelligent Enterprises; the intersection of humans and technology that will make the most impact in the future - not just focussing on the tech which we tend to gravitate towards in IT! PA Consulting is helping our global and government clients reinvent themselves to ensure they can continue to create and protect value in a disrupted world.

The UK IT Industry Awards will take place on 12^th November in London. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.