New single global brand brings together all 28,000 Arcadis staff to better serve clients with firm’s multidisplinary expertise, says UK chief executive Alan Brookes.

Dutch design and consultancy business Arcadis has today consolidated its global business portfolio under the single brand name in a bid to boost its client offering and better integrate the raft of recently acquired businesses. 

The Arcadis name will replace both the EC Harris and Hyder Consulting brands as the two UK businesses are completely absorbed into the parent company following takeovers in 2011 and 2014.

“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,” Alan Brookes, Arcadis UK chief executive.

The newly refreshed logo and single identity, said UK chief executive Alan Brookes, will clarify the firm’s offering for clients, provide a more consistent service and enable it to better leverage the skills across the group, from engineering, design, architecture and commercial services.

“We can still reference the heritage of the Hyder and EC Harris brands, but we want to hand the market a single brand,” he explained. “It is now much easier to offer client an integrated approach.”

The Arcadis name will apply to all business operating in 70 countries with the exception of the Callison and RTKL architectural brands which will merge to create CallisonRTKL.

Brookes said that adopting the single name was simply about reacting to client needs and pointed out that in the four years since they bought the EC Harris business client had been consistently asking for an integrated service.

“This is about reacting to market demands, particularly in the UK,” he said, highlighting that there are 3700 staff now based in Britain.

“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,” said Brookes.

Brookes pointed out that the firms in the group were already well used to collaborating with infrastructure teams at EC Harris, Arcadis and Hyder recently working together to win the £27bn Crossrail 2 project and the £1bn M4 Corridor project for the Welsh government.

“By building on the strength of each of our individual brands, we are jointly in a far stronger position to respond to multiple challenges,” he said. “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.”

“One thing that size does is give you the ability to invest and we are taking on graduates and apprentices from a number of different backgrounds,” Alan Brookes

Brookes also pointed out that while the business was not seeking to grow revenue simply for the sake of size, the firm was always “keen to build our skills to address client needs”.

“It is about bringing agility and flexibility to clients,” he said. “We are focussed on their changing needs and not just pedalling the same services.”

However, Brookes added that there were some clear advantages of scale.

“One thing that size does is give you the ability to invest and we are taking on graduates and apprentices from a number of different backgrounds,” he explained. “It is about getting the right blend. We need good quality people coming through to drive our business forward.”

Arcadis chief executive Neil McArthur said that the single refreshed brand built on the heritage of the firms that it had acquired but now gave a greater ability for the group to draw on global skills and resources.

“Coming together under the single new brand is an important step in bringing our people together to realize our passion of improving the quality of life and being recognized as the best,” he said.