Outlook

Our focus on attracting and retaining talent will continue to be a priority in 2025, in response to the issue of labour scarcity. We aim to maintain high levels of employee engagement and will track the market’s reaction to our rewards programme. Over 2025, we intend to increase the profit share for employees. We are securing our reputation as employer of choice, providing a great place to work, and a supportive, inclusive working environment where our people are involved in inspiring work driven by purpose. Our activities to support the professional and leadership development of our people help them pursue their ambitions and reach their career goals within our organisation. Implementing new ways of working improves the ease of doing business and makes our work more efficient. Working smarter makes the best use of our human capital and we are employing digital tools and automation where possible. We are expanding our recruitment to bring in talent from a wider range of backgrounds. This creates more opportunities for innovation in our multi-disciplinary solutions. The feedback from our Employee Engagement and ED&I surveys will guide our initiatives to shape our working environment and practices according to the needs of all our people.

Following another year of unprecedented extreme weather events, the relevance of our mission remains as strong as ever. The market for sustainable solutions is expanding, not only due to new legislation but also driven by consumers, who are becoming increasingly vocal about sustainable business practices. We are showing the way forward in our own greening activities. We will continue assessing project proposals using our purpose matrix and will refuse projects that we expect to have a negative impact. Our aim is to improve our positive impact score on projects. We intend to allocate part of our net profit into a new fund dedicated to financing global research and innovation in water and climate resilience. Environmental legislation, particularly in Europe, will play a more important role in the speed of public investment. Organisations are looking to us for assistance, drawing on our proven expertise in decarbonising industry and buildings, circular economy innovations and the energy transition. The Asia-Pacific region and Australia are important regions for further expansion, particularly in respect of climate adaptation strategies and sustainability.

We were proud to start 2025 with our financial goals having already been reached through our exceptional performance in 2024. We are continuing to pursue profitable growth across our Global Leading Markets aiming for 9% growth. There are good opportunities in areas including: aviation in response to the global increase in air travel; data centres to cope with the growth in AI; climate resilience and the energy transition; and the urgent need for smart, sustainable measures to replace or extend the lifespan of ageing infrastructure such as roads, bridges and tunnels. Defending and growing our position requires strong relationships with clients, based on understanding the complexities related to their physical assets and addressing them with integrated propositions. We are investing in a new enterprise and resource planning system (ERP) that will support our commitment to simplify and streamline our business activities. Acquisitions and the outcome of our R&D activities boost our performance by extending and strengthening our portfolio.

Competitive and economic pressures will remain strong drivers in our commitment to embed digital technologies and automation in our ways of working. We will continue to pursue a data- driven way of working, accelerating digital skill adoption, and growing our digital solutions for clients. Our vision on data and AI involves leveraging digital technologies to create value for our clients, improve efficiency, productivity and user experience. We are prioritising a joint data platform as the foundation of our digital ambition in a coordinated and centralised way. Artificial Intelligence is impacting all areas of our activities and providing new opportunities for our projects. We expect rapid development in AI-powered consultancy and design tools, and are positioning ourselves to incorporate them, allowing our people to add value through their technical knowledge and creativity. These are the sought-after services required by our clients. There is growing recognition of the benefits our digital twin technology offers to a wide range of markets - from managing the life cycle of a complex asset to minimising risks in production environments. We expect this to continue in 2025.