Arcadis reviews

Probably too many to list but here are the biggest ones for me. The company structure is very convoluted. For instance, the US is broken into four divisions, each of which are further divided into geographic regions. This might seem common but ARCADIS acquired Blasland, Bouck & Lee several years ago largely on the premise that they liked BBL's "client-focused" business model and wanted to adopt it. Under that model, there were no walls within the company so you could work on whatever project wherever it was located, provided you fit the need. This led to a lot more opportunity. Despite what ARCADIS said about liking the business model, they failed to adopt it although it is still cited as part of their business model. The current company structure results in staff of similar capabilities in different parts of the company who are unaware of each other and never collaborate. On more than one occasion, I've seen staff getting laid off in one part while other groups need staff of exactly that background and are working overtime or have open positions to fill the needs. Besides being frustrating and limiting for staff, it disadvantages the company when pursuing new work. ARCADIS feels not like one company but a collection of smaller companies. That's partly due to the growth due to acquisitions but largely due to the division and regional walls. Every time another company is acquired, ARCADIS seems to take everything from that company and tacks it onto their current company structure. At some point, you have to shed concepts to keep streamlined and ARCADIS does not do that. Corporate "noise" is constant. There's an endless stream of directives from corporate to do this, participate in that, and it all takes away one's focus from their job. Seemingly every week, there's another email about a change of top level staff who most of us have never met and honestly could care less about. There's a lot of metrics they want you to hit that really don't have a lot of value, such as their health and safety program. Every January, they complain we have to improve billability when most people realize and expect that January is slow every year. ARCADIS seems to think if they keep badgering you about it that somehow the problem will go away. It won't- it's just part of the business but they don't get that. They have a spot bonus program to recognize above-average effort by staff and it's a great idea except it is ridiculously difficult to get them approved. I've tried and had several rejected because I didn't use the right words or adequately justify it. Why not just trust my judgement? Constant change. ARCADIS seems to only grow by acquiring companies and, every time they do, they are redefining the structure of the company and the reshuffling staff. It rarely improves things and I've learned to pretty much ignore things that don't directly affect my daily responsibilities. The constant change also includes employee turnover, which seems very high. I've heard that about half of the Malcolm Pirnie staff (the latest big acquisition) have left or been let go. That's about 1,500 people and in only about 3 years time. I wonder what the point of the acquisitions is when we can't retain the staff. Lack of long-term vision. Interested in attending a conference? Good luck getting that approved. Even obviously applicable ones get denied routinely. We let highly talented staff go when things get slow. Obviously they have to make ends meet but their focus is on the near term and they don't seem to consider how they can successfully compete when their stars have left or have been let go. Lack of quality controls. In a company this big, you'd think they would have a system in place to control their risks but they really don't. Like I said earlier about ARCADIS being a bunch of smaller companies- these micro companies are doing their own things with little in the way of checks and balances. I've seen a lot of projects go south that could have been prevented had their been a requirement to do independent reviews of the projects but no requirement currently exists.

Arcadis-US is the result of several mergers and takeovers and remains effectively un-integrated despite constant re-structuring. Re-structuring means repeated cycles of lay-offs. Attrition has been on-going at Arcadis. My office, the largest in a top 10 metro area, has lost around 25% of its personnel in the last six months. Many have read the writing on the wall and left on their own, with quite a few others getting canned or laid off. Then the HR department turns around and puts out ads out for the same positions where someone was laid off because things were slow. Upper management freely gives an indifferent attitude to these situations. Business development is hampered by the higher executives who want to grab the goods for themselves. However, as a large company, the extra layers of management make it tougher to win in competitive bid situations. The various databases resulting from these mergers are scattered and repetitive. You have to be careful who you you work with and how on projects, as a fair amount of personnel can engage in sand-bagging or back-stabbing. This can contribute to a poisonous atmosphere. Often such people are working with you remotely and don't feel the need to treat you with a sense of cooperation as they don't have to face you. Many people have to constantly lobby for work as if they were an outside salesperson. While bill-ability targets are often not unreasonable, you can be frozen out if you don't lobby effectively and are not favored by those assigning project slots. Arcadis' image presents a friendly facade, but you soon learn they're not really there to help. There is an unwritten rule that mandatory training and other un-billable work has to be done on your own time. These observations mostly apply to the Environmental division, including soil remediation, industrial hygiene, and the PM-CM division. However, the Water division seems to be having some of the same issues.