Nathan Marsh joined from Atkins in late 2019 in the the newly created role of chief digital officer with a seat on the board.

His role was to “spearhead Costain’s commercial digital strategy, with responsibility for the delivery of group-wide digital services enhancing solutions to clients.”

Staff at Costain’s technology centre in Worle, North Somerset discovered news of his departure last week.

Marsh spent three years at Atkins, latterly as head of digital transformation. Before that, he worked at Ernst & Young in a similar role and previously was an officer in the Welsh Guards.

A Costain spokesperson confirmed the move and emphasised “our digital solutions are an important enabler to our strategy as we communicated recently in our full year results.

“We remain committed to our digital operations and our aspirations and objectives remain unchanged.

“We  have a strong and empowered team who will continue to deliver digital solutions to enable smarter infrastructure programmes for our clients.”