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Introduction 09
Atkins is a consultancy which exists to plan,
design and enable our clients’ capital
programmes. We aim to improve all aspects
of our activities within well understood
business models. The strong performance
of the Group has demonstrated over the
last few years that this focus has been
appropriate and the forecast of continued
high demand for capital programmes of
increasing complexity dictates that it
remains so.
The key to much of the activity that the
Group undertakes is the national and local
nature of the relationships we build with
our clients. The vast majority of our clients
continue to come to Atkins at a local level
because we have key local relationships.
As a result we have de-centralised our
organisation, empowering local management
as far as reasonably possible. Many of our
core skills and the values of our excellent
service culture have currency across the
world, but we do not have a strategy of
becoming a global company; instead our
strategy involves focusing our efforts
where we are able to develop these deep
local relationships with our clients. We call
this part of our strategy multi-local.
In addition to developing local skills, our
local management teams are able to draw
upon the Group’s wide range of skills and
resources. One of Atkins’ key differentiators
is the extensive range of skills that we have
in the organisation. There is rarely a technical
question that cannot be answered by
someone within the Group, allowing us
to be flexible and to consider all options.
Our clients recognise that, by harnessing
this breadth of skills, we can answer their
questions better. This part of our strategy
we call multi-skill.
We believe that our focus upon being
a multi-skill, multi-local consultancy,
with the best combination of quality,
local understanding and breadth of skills,
will allow us to be trusted to deliver
infrastructure projects more often than
our competitors. Bringing the extensive
capabilities of the Group to bear at a local
level is therefore fundamental and will
deliver superior performance.
Climate change is a significant issue for the
world in which we live and it is becoming
a significant issue for many of our clients.
Apart from the normal social responsibility
issues, we are focusing on the area of carbon
calculation and the carbon mitigation of
both the embedded elements and the
whole-life effects of our designs. We have
termed this Carbon Critical Design. We are
doing world-class work in a number of areas
but the practice of embedding carbon
reduction into the design process is still in
its infancy. We need to act now to develop
this capability so as to be able to respond
to the emerging demand and ensure that
clients can meet their carbon agendas over
the next five to ten years. We have therefore
set ourselves the challenge to resolve how
we deliver Carbon Critical Design within
100 weeks. We are investing heavily this
year and next to raise awareness, develop
tools and actively engage with clients on
this important issue.
Carbon Critical Design will affect everything
we do in the long term. It demands an
expansive multi-skilled outlook. It is no
longer appropriate, for example, to segregate
building design from structures, as the whole
system must be optimised to reduce carbon.
This makes Atkins supremely well placed to
lead. We design a very large part of the built
environment and we can engage clients
and change the question. We are not
aspiring to everything being carbon neutral
but we are looking at an iterative journey
to reduce carbon in everything we do.
If we are successful in addressing all
of these areas, we will be well along
the path to being the world’s best
infrastructure consultancy.
Introduction Reviews Governance Financial Statements Investor Information
WS Atkins plc Annual Report 2008