David Tonkin, Atkins UK and Europe chief executive is to step down in December as the business restructures to provide “a strong, technical-based capability” and increase sharing of “compatible skills across markets”.

Nick Roberts, currently strategy and growth director in the North American region, takes over from Tonkin on 1 December and will morph the existing six UK businesses into four larger, market-focused divisions including a new 3000 strong combined road, rail and transportation division.

In a circular to clients Tonkin explained that the restructure was the result of a wider review of the UK operations, and would build “additional scale in core infrastructure markets” to help the business deliver clients greater resource certainty and innovative thinking of projects.

"We think that resource constraints is going to be one of the issues faced by the industry and by bringing together rail and road we now have 3000 people – the largest transportation consultancy in the UK" - David Tonkin.

Speaking to Infrastructure Intelligence, Tonkin added that the business review and restructure coincided with his desire to step down for personal reasons - a decision, he said, that was made and agreed with the business almost a year ago.  (See interview below).

“We perceive that the market is strong and will remain strong for the next three to five years’” said Tonkin. “We think that resource constraint is going to be one of the issues faced by the industry and by bringing together rail and road we now have 3000 people – the largest transportation consultancy in the UK - and a capability that spans the whole transportation sector, we are effectively leveraging resources a lot better.” 

He added: “I am definitely going to take a bit more family-centric time. We often talk about it but rarely achieve it. This gives me a great chance to spend more time around my home in Bristol.”

The new organisation structure will see Atkins’ six UK businesses, which comprises around 8,500 of the firm’s global 18,000 staff, become four larger, market-focused divisions by 1 April 2015:

• The Rail and Highways & Transportation divisions will be brought together to form a 3,000-strong group of specialists to solve the key transport issues.
• The Defence, Aerospace and Communications division will be combined with Management Consultants to create an enhanced client-side advisory capability and extend the engineering expertise in high technology markets such as defence, aerospace and security. 
• The Design & Engineering division will continue to provide a focus on buildings and infrastructure for the Energy, Defence, Aviation, Transportation, Education and Mixed Use Development sectors. 
• The Water & Environment division will continue to serve its existing clients with diverse services from its water engineering, ground engineering, planning and environmental teams.

There will be no changes to Faithful+Gould or Atkins’ Energy division in the UK.

"As our clients and markets evolve, so must we. These changes position us better to deliver the technical capabilities, resources and innovation that will help our clients meet their business goals" Atkins chief executive Uwe Krueger.

A statement to the city added: “Against a backdrop of increasingly complex challenges, continued pressure on budgets, industry consolidation and a growing shortage of people with the right skills, the changes will enable the company to put greater emphasis on aligning more closely with its clients’ business objectives and providing innovative approaches to their challenges by drawing on a wider pool of cross-sector and cross-discipline experience.”

Prof Dr Uwe Krueger, chief executive officer, Atkins, said: “As our clients and markets evolve, so must we. These changes position us better to deliver the technical capabilities, resources and innovation that will help our clients meet their business goals and solve the increasingly complex challenges we face."

He added: “Nick brings a wealth of knowledge from across a number of our UK markets together with an international perspective which will be extremely valuable in driving this evolution of our UK business. I would also like to thank David wholeheartedly for his dedication to Atkins over the past few years and for charting this new course for the UK & Europe region.”

Interview with David Tonkin, Atkins UK and Europe chief executive

Does this restructure fix something that was broken at Atkins?

No. We genuinely think that there is a great market out there so the question is how do we better orient ourselves to grab that opportunity in a better way? I define a good market as having a lot of demand and clearly the interesting issue now is how you go through the market – we passionately believe there is opportunity to bring innovation and slightly different concepts around how you deliver for clients.

In what way will this new structure deliver more for your clients?

Clients increasingly worry about resources and about delivery so we are changing our model to have a better grasp of resources so that we can divert them as necessary to projects. The Highways Agency for example used to deal with a highways business at Atkins that had 1200 staff. Now it will deal with a transportation business that has 3000 staff to draw on. So that allows us to ensure that our resource capability works across the [technical] boundaries.

You talk about being more able to provide resources for clients. How? 

“We think that resource constraint is going to be one of the issues faced by the industry and by bringing together rail and road we now have 3000 people – the largest transportation consultancy in the UK -  and a capability that spans the whole transportation sector. We are effectively leveraging resources a lot better.”

Your competitors are building resource through consolidation. Is Atkins bucking this trend?

I think that this is Atkins recognising how big is good. 18,000 people gives you a lot of reach (but our move creates a) flexibility of approach and very close “client centric” approach where you thoroughly understand the client’s outcomes. We believe that a UK based company with 8500 people is better placed to be that little bit more agile. For a number of these companies the UK is an overseas subsidiary. For us we are a UK company so we can provide a lot more flexibility and agility but also that resource base across our markets.

But you were trying to buy Parson Brinckerhoff – is this the result of losing out to WSP?

No  - PB has around 1500 people in the UK so we would still have been doing this manoeuvre. But we have always set our stall out as being able to grow organically. If we can get acquisitions then that’s brilliant. But if they don’t come off it is not the end of the world. 

What will Nick Robert’s big challenges be?

Clearly as Nick comes into the business he has to understand the drivers behind the new organisation and lead it. I have been the architect over the last three to four months, and Nick is picking it up and making sure that it is implemented well. The new structure will go live in April next year so he will be appointing the next layers of management to shape and cascade down. Operational control passes to Nick on 1 December and I will work with him through the transition.

What are you going to do now?

I am definitely going to take a bit more family-centric time. We often talk about it but rarely achieve it. This gives me a great chance to spend more time around my home in Bristol. Retirement would be a strong word. It is unlikely I will go back into a mainstream corporate role but non-executive and executive coaching roles would certainly be on the cards. For me this is another one of my ten year career changes but I will definitely be adopting an different lifestyle.