News releases 2014

Atkins realigns UK business to meet evolving client needs - 11 November 2014

Atkins has announced plans to reorganise its UK business to enable it to provide higher levels of certainty and flexibility of resources and apply compatible skills and innovation across sectors to meet the evolving needs of its clients and core markets.

Against a backdrop of increasingly complex challenges, continued pressure on budgets, industry consolidation and a growing shortage of people with the right skills, the changes will enable the company to put greater emphasis on aligning more closely with its clients' business objectives and providing innovative approaches to their challenges by drawing on a wider pool of cross-sector and cross-discipline experience.  

Prof Dr Uwe Krueger, chief executive officer, Atkins, said: "As our clients and markets evolve, so must we. These changes position us better to deliver the technical capabilities, resources and innovation that will help our clients meet their business goals and solve the increasingly complex challenges we face."

The new organisation, which has been co-created by Atkins' UK leadership team, involves merging some of its six UK businesses to create four larger, market-focused divisions to clients:

  • The Rail and Highways & Transportation divisions will be brought together to form a 3,000-strong group of specialists whose combined skills can help solve the key transport issues.
  • The Defence, Aerospace and Communications division will be combined with Management Consultants to create an enhanced client-side advisory capability and extend the engineering expertise we provide into high technology markets such as defence, aerospace and security. 
  • The Design & Engineering division will continue to provide a focus on buildings and infrastructure for the Energy, Defence, Aviation, Transportation, Education and Mixed Use Development sectors. 
  • The Water & Environment division will continue to serve its existing clients with diverse services from its water engineering, ground engineering, planning and environmental teams.

There will be no changes to Faithful+Gould or Atkins' Energy division in the UK.

To coincide with the next phase of its UK business plans and to guarantee its uninterrupted delivery, David Tonkin has decided to step down from his role as UK & Europe chief executive officer to focus on the health and wellbeing of his family and pursue a more family-centric phase of his life. David will be succeeded by Nick Roberts, who is currently strategy and growth director for Atkins' North America region.  Nick has spent much of his career with consulting companies in the UK and internationally in the water and environment sector, and has held leadership roles in Atkins' UK Design & Engineering, Rail and Water & Environment divisions.

Prof Dr Krueger added: "Nick brings a wealth of knowledge from across a number of our UK markets together with an international perspective which will be extremely valuable in driving this evolution of our UK business. I would also like to thank David wholeheartedly for his dedication to Atkins over the past few years and for charting this new course for the UK & Europe region."

The transition to the new operating model will be completed by 1 April 2015. Nick Roberts will assume his post on 1 December 2014.

Ends

For more information:

Gary Gaskarth
Head of External communications

+44 (0) 207 121 2676 / +44 (0) 7834 56 5675
Gary.Gaskarth@atkinsglobal.com

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Notes to editors:

Atkins

Atkins (www.atkinsglobal.com ) is one of the world's leading design, engineering and project management consultancies*, employing some 17,500 people across the UK, North America, Middle East, Asia Pacific and Europe. Our people's breadth and depth of expertise and drive to ask why has allowed us to plan, design and enable some of the world's most complex and time critical projects.

*15th largest global design firm (Engineering News-Record 2014) and the third largest multidisciplinary consultancy in Europe (Svensk Teknik och Design 2013).

Recent projects from across the Group:

Atkins is working across urban regeneration, master planning, national energy programmes, major transport schemes, water and environment projects - applying smart design solutions on projects including:

  • Central Planning Office - helping to co-ordinate Qatar's National 2030 Vision for world class transport infrastructure, which will bring major benefits to the economy;
  • The London 2012 Games infrastructure transformation - as technical advisor to London's boroughs as the Olympic Park moves into its legacy configuration as a follow-on role to our work as the Games' official engineering and design provider;
  • 's peaceful nuclear new build programme - providing technical assurance to lenders backing the United Arab Emirates' most ambitious energy infrastructure projects;
  • North Sea and Gulf of Mexico oil and gas platforms - extending the operational life of critical oil and gas platforms to allow cost-efficient and safe recovery of fuel sources from mature fields;
  • offshore wind alliance - provision of expert engineering and design support for the UK's biggest offshore wind alliance with Scottish and Southern Energy;
  • - designing the Central London twin tunnels and station architecture for Europe's biggest civil engineering scheme which will see tunnels passing beneath 470 listed buildings and critical infrastructure;
  • Railway - providing multidisciplinary design expertise on the 1,200 km Rail network which will passenger and freight transport in the ;
  • Denmark - providing signalling expertise on the first countrywide installation of an train control and management system in Denmark;
  • Hong Kong-- Bridge - lead consultant on this integral part of the new Hong Kong link road scheme which will significantly boost land connectivity in the region;
  • Sixth Form College - design of the energy consumption College in the UK which aims to reduce operational energy use by more than 60% compared to previous designs;
  • UK National Composites Centre - providing technical expertise to bring the latest lightweight carbon fibre materials to all engineering sectors, helping to develop innovative applications and reduce costs and carbon;
  • US Environmental Protection Agency - providing technical assessment and analysis of national water-related resources and ecological systems in North America;
  • Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) broadband - providing technical, commercial and procurement support to help deliver broadband to one of Europe's most remote regions.


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