lead consultant

air quality specialist

senior managing consultant

acoustic consultant

senior project engineer

Ramboll

Humiliation, harassment, finger pointing and talking behind your back is what this company revolves around.

My coworkers and boss ganged up against me in the first few months of starting my job here and created a very negative image of me in the company. This place treats new employees terribly. There is unfair competition, internal politics and unfair bias towards certain employees. If for some personal reason a senior employee doesn't like you, they will play a lot of politics behind your back and build up additional negative points against you very quickly and unfairly. If you make even a minor mistake specially in your early days at work, it gets reported behind your back to your supervisor and you will be interrogated and put on trial. You will be paid for 40 hours a week but will be expected to put in much more, if you don't you will be looked down upon and they will gossip about you.

I was treated every single day in a very humiliating way, and this was my first ever industry job after graduating school. Getting into Ramboll's Salt Lake City office has been the worst decision of my life. They were so clever in not communicating the exact task description when every task was assigned to me, and then later complain about things that I didn't do or did incorrectly which was never even asked of me. My boss spent most of her energy coming after me like a hawk. I felt intimidated every single day going into work, let alone get any hint of motivation or enjoyment. They demoted me five months into the work and later fired me despite showing significant increase in work quality. I got zero cooperation from my coworkers, peers, HR or anyone else from the company. It is like an absolute tyranny where your bosses are like gods and you are not allowed to question anything. They will not teach you much, but will only complain in the things you did not do, without properly communicating the expectations. They will also have an expectation that you should magically know everything about this project that you are just hearing about, and you are supposed to do everything about that project without any direction, guidance or even anyone asking you to do anything. Time sheets are maintained to 6 minutes of precision. If you spend even a little more than a pre-allocated billable hour in one project, you get interrogated and harassed. 

If you have 10 years of prior work experience as an air quality consultant in some other industry, you can try your chance surviving in this predatory environment. But if you are just out of school and brand new to the world of consulting industry, please stay away a million miles from this particular company. I highly recommend against this company.


The culture in the west coast offices is toxic. The air practice has a problem.

Let’s start with the managers and leaders. Too many of them are unreasonable when it comes their subordinates - they put unnecessary pressure on consultant staff to meet certain goals, without providing any support whatsoever. Some principals/managers are good, but some are pretty annoying to deal with. There’s a strong sense of superiority with them, they discourage questions, expect consultant staff to quite literally read their minds, and look down upon people they perceive to be “lesser”. They often micromanage. There’s so much of an emphasis on bottom line profitability that it eats into employee well-being. 

Next, the peers. I’ve never come across a more difficult group of people to work with. Consultants often drop the ball on tasks assigned to them and yet are smart enough to pin the blame on you when the project goes awry. Not many are helpful, several are rude when you ask for help and often try to undercut you during team calls. However, leadership appears to favor these types of personalities, as they are the ones who get the most opportunities. 

There is a strong culture of narrow-mindedness. Managers have a tendency to keep work within a known professional circle, and are biased, judgmental, and selfish. Cliques abound and managers have no accountability. Resources are not utilized well and project management is non-existent. However, the blame culture is strong.

There is no meritocracy here. The culture is pretentious. Staff is only interested in showing off their “superior technical skills” to one another, without any sense of collaboration or teaming.

We are large firm with many divisions and areas of practice. I am in the Water division and work closely with the Energy division working on facility designs. 

After working in different places, I finally think I have found a home where people are generally very supportive of each other and come together to get projects done. And also a great projects all over to work on spanning treatment facilities, source water quality control, lead service line, heavy civil, large pump stations and more. And room to grow with the mentorship to succeed. 

Being a Danish company our benefits, medical, WEX, retirement, PTO (max out at nearly two months a year in including holiday time), and parental leave .

My typical day consisted of working in a cubicle and examining court documents pertaining to asbestos litigation cases. I learned how use critical reading skills while searching through litigation paperwork. Management was present and helpful in the beginning, however a buyout caused my department to merge with another. The new manager was macro-manager and did not have time to accommodate my needs. The work culture was okay at best, they went out for happy hour every once in a while and also had food in the office. The hardest part of the job came towards the end trying to find work to keep me occupied because once the buyout came, my manager left and my work dried up. The most enjoyable was being able to travel when other departments needed extra hands on different projects.

I was a part of the Ramboll team for 3 years, and switched between 2 divisions depending on whether I did Air quality or soil quality work in the remediation field. Every job has its up and down, but between both team a lot of trust was handed to me to complete what I had to complete. Coming straight out of college, this position loaded me up with experience. My Team was always willing to help and teach, and help me grow understanding that is what I ultimately wanted.

Being in this field, means that jobs may be far from you if Ramboll wins the bid. So if you are an onsite person, then you might not be so lucky, especially when your current job site is minutes from your house, and suddenly a bid is won across the state and you have to transfer there with good times notice, or when your current job ends.

Client-facing staff (principals, managers) make commitments about deadlines and work products with clients without confirming staff availability or workload first, causing many emergency project situations. Feels like we are constantly fighting to put out "fires" that are not of our own making, which is highly dispiriting. Very difficult to control one's workload or to even have control over what you work on on a daily basis. We hear of "record profits" during staff meetings that don't translate into "record salaries".

What is the best part of working at the company?
Good promise makers. Follow-through is another thing.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Communication with workers off-site. Supervisor preferred to be out of office/out of town.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Hard to tell. With remote workers out so much, new employees can't get much of flavor for it. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
I come in and few colleagues are present. Not sure if I am late or early since we have no given start core hours to meet. I do what I know to do but guidance is limited due to travel of teammates.

I enjoyed "My" personal work experience with Ramboll
The new Office Manager was very nice...
Overall I believe it to be a Good company to work for.
It has a very location and offices.
The people at Ramboll were very helpful and very assisting with questions and information were needed.(Not All) but for the Most part
they are a Good group of people to work for.

Cannot speak for anyone pursuing science careers here as it seemed to be a positive environment for them. As a support staff I had to beg for basic things my team was already granted, such as the flexibility to work from home 1 measly day a week. Once the OBG merger occurred, staff from OBG were prioritized. Departing was easy once I knew I was worthless to the company.

Overall excellent place to work.  I had a couple negative experiences but those were limited to my office and my relationships.  Overall Ramboll is a strong progressive company who cares about your success, and making the world a better place.  If you're considering bringing your science or engineering career here, I say do your own research on the company and make your own decision on if it's for you, but I did enjoy it. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Lead consultant 162 salaries reported	$99,022 per year
Air quality specialist 115 salaries reported	$141,985 per year
Senior managing consultant 69 salaries reported	$174,130 per year
Acoustic consultant 102 salaries reported	$117,953 per year
Senior project engineer 31 salaries reported	$111,668 per year

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