The names EC Harris and Hyder Consulting are to disappear from the market and the firms’ capabilities are being fully integrated under a rebranding exercise from Dutch-headquartered parent company Arcadis.
Arcadis merged with EC Harris in November 2011, and acquired consulting engineer Hyder Consulting in 2014. Arcadis arrived in the UK in 2006 when it acquired quantity surveying business AYH.
Arcadis now operates in 70 countries with a total staff of 28,000, and will go to the market globally as a single brand.
In the UK, the capabilities of EC Harris and Hyder will be combined, so that clients looking for both engineering and project management advice, for instance, would deal with a single Arcadis team rather than two divisions.
Alan Brookes, chief executive of Arcadis in the UK, said: “In the UK we will see our expert teams from EC Harris and Hyder Consulting come together and go to market as one powerful, integrated Arcadis brand. This will help provide a clarity and consistency of approach to our clients who are already benefiting from our global collaboration.”
“The combination of EC Harris’s consulting expertise with Hyder’s design and engineering capability has cemented our capability as Arcadis to offer integrated solutions that encompass the whole project lifecycle.”
Brookes said that EC Harris and Hyder Consulting have already working closely together, for instance collaborating to win work for both teams on the £27bn Crossrail 2 project, while the highways teams have both won work for the Welsh government on the £1bn M4 Corridor project.
“This shows how, by building on the strength of each of our individual brands, we are jointly in a far stronger position to respond to multiple challenges. The move to Arcadis reflects our broader ability to adapt to market issues, learn from best practice examples around the world and constantly innovate to deliver the best solutions.
“The combination of EC Harris’s consulting expertise with Hyder’s design and engineering capability has cemented our capability as Arcadis to offer integrated solutions that encompass the whole project lifecycle.”
Neil McArthur, chief executive of Arcadis globally, said: “Our clients tell us that the challenges they face call for their business partners to adapt and innovate, to bring their best ideas and expertise from around the world. Over the past two years we have invested heavily in our business to meet these client needs.
“Building on the rich heritage of the excellent firms that have joined Arcadis and our leading design and consultancy positioning, the refreshed brand reflects Arcadis’ ability to seamlessly draw on our global capabilities to provide exceptional and sustainable outcomes across the whole lifecycle of natural and built assets.”
The new Arcadis logo and corporate identity, updated for the first time since the late 1990s, modernises its orange and black “fire salamander” symbol. The fire salamander, according to the company’s Wikipedia page, is “a species which can only live in an ecologically stable environment” and the orange links to the company’s Dutch heritage.
Architecture firm RTKL also became an Arcadis company in 2007, and in August 2014 it also acquired Callison, a design firm operating in the US, China, Europe, Middle East and Mexico. However, these two firms will operate as CallisonRTKL.
