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Aecom to cut 350 more jobs
24 November, 2009
Engineering consultant says 'further downturn' in order book will force it to reduce workforce by 13% in UK and Europe
Engineering giant Aecom is gearing up to make 350 redundancies in the UK and Europe as consultants continue to battle the recession.
The firm’s UK and Europe chief executive, Ken Dalton, has written to staff saying headcount will have to be reduced by almost 13% due to a “further downturn in our order book” in the last four months.
The cuts come on top of a 4% reduction in staff numbers earlier this year.
Dalton said: “During the early parts of the summer we were hopeful that the actions we had taken during the course of the year were sufficient to sustain the level of business that was being won by the company.
“However, during the last four months we have seen a further downturn in our order book and the outlook across many of our sectors is not predicted to recover for some time.”
A redundancy consultation with affected staff will be launched before Christmas.
Readers' comments
Makes a interesting contridiction of last months news of "In five years' time, Bill Hanway expects Aecom's British business to be twice as big as it is now" Terrible time for this to happen and as a former employee it's interesting that yet again it's the junior staff who seem to be taking up the brunt of the losses.
I agree with the comment above that it is terrible timing, but I hope the comment is wrong about it being junior staff being culled when it should be at all levels. Times like these need chief executives to take surgeon's knife to their consultancies not a butcher's knife!
I think this time around higher grades will go. It's been obvious since the cull last Christmas and in the summer that we're too top heavy. If they axe juniors again they'll have no one cheap enough to do the legwork.