A New Kind of Consultancy

As of November 9, the firms that have carried the AECOM name are now one. Our new global brand signifies something far deeper than a name, a logo and a color palette. It reflects our progress toward creating a new kind of consultancy, one in which a host of disciplines once thought of as separate will operate in one process as part of one team to create, enhance and sustain places, communities, environments and infrastructure systems.

Architects, engineers, landscape architects, planners, economists, ecologists and program managers have always worked together to conceive and implement projects. One or several of these disciplines may work on a small project. For a large project, a team may be assembled from a host of different consultancies. Even when many or all of these disciplines come together, they do so, if not at cross purposes, then with unequal status or without a shared consciousness.

By integrating these disciplines within AECOM, we are doing more than bringing them together. We are creating a shared consciousness of connected knowledge in which a project team, from the formative phases of the project, is aware of how design affects socioeconomics, how engineering affects ecosystems and how all of these disciplines can work together to achieve optimal outcomes.

No longer can we ignore the intersections. A landscape architect designing a park must consider the utilities that embrace the space. An engineer providing flood management measures must consider the role of green infrastructure. An architect designing a building must consider that economy that supports it. Every environment is made up of built, natural and social layers. Technology will drive innovation in sustainability and high-performance buildings and sites, but we need greater awareness of natural systems and greater emphasis on social equity and livability. We need to restore ecosystems as much as we need to restore cities. We need to reimagine before we reinvest in infrastructure.

One of my favorite AECOM projects is the Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park. In China, where pollution and the lack of a public realm are endemic problems, we took an industrially polluted site and created a natural wetland that is both engineered to treat water and designed to be a park for the public. Thus ecology, engineering and design come together, and thus you have solutions that achieve progress on multiple levels.

Forging this shared consciousness will provide superior results for our clients. Providing all of these services in one contract vehicle, we will deliver their projects with greater efficiencies and more enduring value. Clients will have building projects that gel with their social contexts, provide real economic development and are eminently sustainable. This will become the preferred model for delivering consulting services, and we will be the leader in it.

The importance of what we are doing goes beyond client satisfaction on the individual project basis. This approach is the only way in which we can address the major challenges facing the contemporary world. Climate change, resource scarcity, urbanization, economic turmoil, aging infrastructure, socioeconomic disparity—these are challenges that no single discipline can fathom. Complex challenges require interconnected knowledge and multi-faceted solutions. This is what AECOM provides. Our purpose is to create, enhance and sustain the world's built, natural and social environments. The world needs what we are doing, and we are dedicated to the task.

Joe Brown