Global consultant to exploit capital fund for UK-wide projects as it drops Davis Langdon identity.
Consultancy giant Aecom is poised to strike risk-and-reward sharing project deals that either put its own equity on the table or link its fee to successful performance, CM has been told.
The emerging plans were revealed in an interview with two London-based directors of the global, US-based consultancy to mark a new phase in its trajectory.
From 1 October, three years after it acquired the 3,500 strong Davis Langdon cost consultancy, Aecom will stop using the term “Davis Langdon, an Aecom company”.
Instead, cost consultancy will present itself to the market as part of Aecom’s global Project, Cost, Consultancy team, which in turn is one of three divisions in the 10,000 strong Building + Places group. PCC sits alongside engineering and design in the group led by Olympic Park masterplanner Jason Prior, whose former company EDAW was acquired by Aecom in 2006.
"I can think of a scheme that we are interested in where we agree to deliver an outcome – we need to get them through planning, we take a risk around services and programme – and we also put money into the venture to get it moving."
Nick Clare, Aecom
EMEA director Nick Clare MCIOB, a project manager and former equity partner at Davis Langdon, said the UK-based business is likely to exploit Aecom’s in-house Aecom Capital fund.
“The business has funding arrangements which aren’t particularly active in this country right now, but it is looking to become more active. It means taking a different view of risk – we might contribute sweat equity, or put equity on the table. We’re not [run as] a traditional partnership, so if there’s the right project, why not?”
Asked to give an example, he said: “I can think of a scheme that we are interested in where we agree to deliver an outcome – we need to get them through planning, we take a risk around services and programme – and we also put money into the venture to get it moving.”
Global building engineering director Craig Sparrow, who recently joined Aecom from Skanska, said that Aecom was also interested in linking its role to energy performance and energy savings for commercial buildings. “Energy performance contracting for a business like Aecom is terribly exciting,” said Sparrow. “I’ve lived and breathed this for five years at Skanska, and elsewhere in Europe I know it’s relatively mature.”
Aecom’s deal-making ambitions stand in contrast to the decidedly traditional equity partnership culture that held sway at Davis Langdon, says Clare. “If I’d proposed something similar at a partnership meeting, they’d have been spitting their coffee out!” he said.
Aecom has also signalled its intention to try its hand at residential development. As a partner in City House Projects, the company delivering the Rational House modular housebuilding system, it is considering opportunities to fund or part-fund projects out of its own funds.
Ben De Waal, director of housing and part of the PCC team, pointed to the North West Cambridge site, masterplanned by Aecom, as a possible opportunity for City House Projects.
Craig Sparrow: “exciting”
Asked about the differences between Davis Langdon’s culture and that of Aecom, Clare noted that openness to change had always been part of Davis Langdon. “As a historic Davis Langdon partner, I know the firm was made up of numerous acquisitions and mergers anyway – such as Mott Green Wall and Schumann Smith. Ultimately it was quite a diverse culture and we’re all quite used to it.”
He said that Davis Langdon’s reputation for QS-ing on prestige projects, major commercial schemes and signature architects’ work would persist in the new structure, but that Aecom’s cost consultancy would additionally benefit from its globalised cost expertise – manifested in a new cost database called Global Unite.
“We’re not just doing commercial office blocks in London, were doing them in New York and the Middle East, and we transfer the knowledge back and apply it for our clients.”
He also said that some UK clients and developers were interested in hiring Aecom as a single, integrated service provider, rather than mix and matching separate professional services.
“In the Middle East and Africa, that’s a typical approach – you hire one team to solve all your problems. In the UK, lots of clients still prefer to make the decisions themselves, but we’re starting to see people interested in the joined up proposition in the UK.”
