Aecom plans mass UK&I transport layoffs due to key clients’ ‘unanticipated decisions’

The message was relayed in an internal communication to staff from Aecom Transportation regional business line lead Laurence Brett, seen by NCE.

It stated: “Although the UK government is working to revive private investment and productivity to support potential growth, we are experiencing significant uncertainty in the external market with unanticipated decisions taken by key clients. This overlayed with a forthcoming UK election is causing a downturn in our future pipeline.”

Aecom must therefore “reshape” the business in order to “meet the reduced demand for some of our services and ensure the sustainability of our overall Transportation business”.

NCE was informed of the announcement by an anonymous “concerned employee” who said that those at risk of redundancy have been put into “pools” of between one and three, where one or two will lose their jobs.

“This is extremely stressful for my colleagues involved,” they said.

The concerned employee also claimed that further reasoning behind the layoffs was due to Aecom transferring a portion of its employee base overseas. They said that the company has an increased target for work to be delivered by engineers employed by its Enterprise Capability Centre in Bangalore, India and other areas where labour cost is lower.

“The offshoring of works was not mentioned in the call, but it is a known issue which worries many at Aecom and massively contributed to the decrease in workloads in the UK since Covid, as already reported when 500 were laid off in 2020,” they said.

“The UK Construction industry is suffering and the little public spending happening risks being shipped off to lower cost countries to keep profits up for corporations, while UK engineers lose their jobs and are put in really difficult positions.”

An Aecom spokesperson said: “Aecom has reviewed the impact of market changes and the delay or cancellation of some projects on its UK transportation business. As a result, some reshaping of the business is required, and we are commencing a consultation process with employees impacted by our proposals.

“We will aim to mitigate the impact of this process where possible. This includes looking at opportunities to use our Think and Act Globally strategy to divert talent to other parts of our business, and we will also be considering voluntary redundancy applications. Our priority is to support our employees during this unsettling time. We remain committed to providing the best services for our clients and have taken this difficult decision to support their changing needs.”

Contrastingly, in January this year Aecom announced a recruitment drive to bring around 380 people into its environment, water and energy business.

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