“ Aecom aims to rekindle communities and adds in joy to their lives on the planet.”
— Aecom
Aecom is an Architectural studio, rendering their business by putting forth their responsibility first and striving hard in reducing emissions and creating social impact and developing senior leadership and workforce. They are trying their best to bring in a future that is more sustainable and equitable to live in. The team usually follows a close rapport with the clients to improve their livelihood, plus creating a sustainable legacy.
They consider that limits have bound us from exploring beyond, so they’ve envisioned the strategy to have ideas that are boundaryless and suggest that this kind of ethos must be a part of our culture. They strongly believe in the scope of global expertise and make sure it is available to everyone and from wherever they are, based on their ideology. They have a valuable team of planners, designers, engineers, consultants and program and construction managers who strive hard to deliver professional services which includes spanning cities, transportation, buildings, water, new energy, and the environment.
History
Aecom was started by a handful of employees, which grew with the aid of people from design and engineering fields who shared similar dreams and aimed to create a better world. The company was formed from an independent company by the merging of five entities. While the company’s official beginning point was in 1990 many of their predecessor firms had already established their histories.
Since then, more than 50 companies have joined hands with Aecom, adding to it, in 2007, they grew to fame as a publicly-traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.
Work Ethos for the future
As the world of work keeps changing, there are three major trends that they follow to shape the focus of their future offices to develop, manage and use.
1. Designing to adapt within a circular economy
For generations, the construction industry has been following a linear economy model, where materials and resources are being mined, manufactured, used and finally discarded. The negative impact it creates on the built environment using up all the resources available and for instance, in the EU they produce a waste of one-third of the total. The more we’re exploiting our resources it will lead to climate change and more. Thus, choosing the circular economy model can offer a more sustainable and regenerative approach, prioritizing retention and refurbishments of buildings and reusing the materials.
From now on, if we start designing buildings with a thought process for the future, potentially our future will be irretrievably bound together. Adaptive buildings such as Park 20|20 in Amsterdam give users the experience of a traditional, permanent structure while using modular components within the cradle-to-cradle principles, allowing workplaces to be more responsive, cost-effective and sustainable.
2. Data-enabled collaboration and customization
In the future, new technologies could help us make collaboration and individuals work even more efficiently. For instance, voice and mood sensors in office buildings could recognize the energy of impromptu conversations between colleagues and bring the meeting space to the people through a temporary acoustic bubble that provides both privacy and workflow. Adopting a comprehensive approach to sensor data capturing, storage and accessibility, must be brought to daylight. It must be inbuilt from the beginning, both virtually in Building Information Modelling (BIM) and physically within the building.
3. Your people will always matter most
In the future, offices will be fully automatic regardless of our daily work. But as Geoff Colvin, the author of ‘Humans are underrated’, asserts that every human must empathise, collaborate and innovate as its integral for an organisation to function. Thus, it can decrease the human workforce and the value of employees.
Aecom has the policy of putting the employee’s well-being and office quality first, as they are considered the most expensive and valuable asset. Possibility of understanding and measuring the workplace’s impact can be quite difficult, thus Aecom has formulated a 6-way holistic approach to benefit health care for their people, such as physiological, psychological, social, intellectual, values and material. There will be a definite change in the workplace of designers, developers, occupiers and users that cannot be overstated, yet Aecom stands for cliental comfort and makes sure the organisation is being effective.
Global approach
The multiple locations of clientele base services have been managed, by proper leadership and local expertise to lead wherever they operate, and also providing uniform solutions streamlined throughout the geographies. Aecom leverages an infrastructure specifically to manage the complexities of regionally diverse real estate portfolios and organizes the teams around each client’s structure. With locations in more than 150 countries, they have developed a strong network of offices that can support a variety of real estate needs. All of their partner firms follow Aecom’s strict reporting requirements and quality control standards.
The life cycle of services
Aecom’s approach to the lifecycle of real estate assets gives them the capacity to support their clients in any facet of project or program delivery. While they can take a project from strategy through construction and operations and engage when and where their clients’ needs them most.
Here are some of the amazing projects by Aecom:
1. One World trade centre
One World Trade Center (WTC) is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere at a height of 1,776 feet. Aecom Tishman was incharge for the pre-construction stages and also the construction management works for the New York’s Port Authority and One World Trade Center in New Jersey. As the former builder of the Twin Towers built in 1973, Aecom Tishman was appointed to get involved at the WTC site, since 2001, which includes assisting the 9/11 clean-up efforts and worked on more than 11 million square feet of the latest construction.
They have made an innovative move to use a safety cocoon system which led to zero total incidents of significance on the project. The cocoon enveloped 16 floors and rose with the building to guard initial floor trades: steel, concrete, and spray fireproofing. This was the primary cocoon on a hybrid steel and concrete building.
They brought together all of the systems to work together under one wing, like the architects, engineers and subcontractors teams, which included electrical, plumbing, fire and life safety, concrete and others into one centralized Building Information Modelling (BIM) command. It enabled each subcontractor to feature their components in the models as they created in direct collaboration with the opposite subcontractors. WTC has won many awards, which includes Engineering News-Record’s 2015 best of the simplest Projects within the Office/Retail/Mixed-Use category.
2. Schiphol Airport New Pier Design
Aecom’s aviation design team is planning to construct a replacement pier at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, which is a formulated plan to extend capacity at the airport. This multidisciplinary project will add value to Schiphol’s position as Europe’s main aviation hub.
They delivered a comprehensive plan of the event alongside local architectural partners Cepezed. The work involves the preliminary, final and technical design stages which takes the project through to construction tendering and therefore the supervision through the development phase.
The upcoming new pier design at the airport will be planned with eight new gates, including five gates for narrow-body aircraft on the side. Three Multiple Apron Ramp System (MARS) for the gates on the side will aid in providing space for the widebody aircraft and also connect six narrow body aircraft. In a later stage, two additional widebody gates will hook up with the side of the new pier.
The pier will have three passenger categories namely, Schengen, non-Schengen and non-Schengen from non-secure destinations. It will come with a replacement terminal development and increase the airport’s passenger capacity relatively by, 14 million passengers per annum.
Aecom towards a better world
Aecom was started to make the world a better place to live in. The firm designs, builds, finances and operates critical infrastructure assets for governments, businesses and organizations. As a totally integrated firm, they connect knowledge across our global network of experts to assist clients solve their most complex challenges.
Ranging from high-performance buildings and infrastructure to resilient communities and environments; to stable and secure nations, their effort has been transformative, creative and vital. Approximately $13.2 billion of Professional Services revenue was made during the financial year 2020. Listed at #189 on the Fortune 500 together with America’s largest companies.
- Ranked #1 in the field: Engineering News-Record’s 2020 “Top 200 Environmental Firms.
- Ranked #1 in Transportation and General Building for the the category:Engineering News-Record’s 2020 “Top 500. Design Firms”.
- Named one among Fortune magazine’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” as of the sixth successful consecutive year.
- Named one among the 2021 World’s Most Ethical Companies for their dedicated commitment towards integrity and making a positive impact on Ethisphere.
Reference
AECOM. 2021. AECOM | AECOM. [online] Available at: <https://aecom.com/> [Accessed 4 September 2021].
