If you planning to work for AECOM in Collegeville PA campus be ready to lose your job at any moment.
This is a facts: for less than 2 years all 4 stationary engineers lost theirs job. One of them was badly injured at work. All of them was loyal to the company,when it was necessary for a weeks they didn’t left boiler room to help company come through the tough time.All 4 of them had perfect evaluation and thanks from the management.But it was meant anything all 4 of them lost theirs job as soon director desided to replace them.Another fact for less than 2 years 3 workres of 15 was injured at work. One very knolegeble manager was fired another one had operation on his heart and a few months of his returning to work his position was eliminated.Your responsibilities will be to operate 2 plants one with 3 boilers and 7 chillers and another one with 2 boilers and 5 chillers.You have to monitor 16 buildings for heating ,cooling ,fire and any other issue and fix the problem during no maintenance on the campus Also you have to do rounds through most of the buildings.You have to do chemical tests and add them as needed.You have to do a lot of pm’s .And if some of your coworker didn’t finished it on time –you got to finish it.You have to operate 5 computers in which you will have a thousands alarms per shift ,take a guess how many alarms you will miss because you doing your other duties.But any of your missed alarm can be investigated and disciplinary action may take place.3rd on
2.0
Associate Project Manager | United States | Oct 16, 2012
Stratified corporate environment with no upward mobility or compensation
Five years as an assistant project manager for URS left a sour taste in my mouth. Co-workers are terrible at delegation and communication skills, especially for a leading engineering firm. Act like their jobs are at risk, and highly secretive and territorial about projects even if we are on the same team. Sensitivity training is badly needed in my engineering department given insensitive comments based on ageism, gender, political affiliation, and race. HR did not respond to repeated requests by multiple employees, and HR is off-site.
Office place is nice, low-wall cubicles surrounding outward facing offices. Most everyone has window view and the surroundings were recently updated. Fortunate to have ample parking and room in the floors in our building.
My average day cannot be easily quantified. Last minute work is commonplace due to the poor communication and hoarding of information of my teammates, management, and affiliated departments. Frequently running from a client meeting to budgeting to contract review to preparation, and often forced to perform tasks outside my scope because I fight so many fires concurrently. This is a highly stressful and disorganized environment that will shock anyone used to more practiced or process-oriented offices. URS is choked by its regulations, corporate-wide policies, and procedures that attempt a one-size-fits-all variety. We reinvent the wheel very often, a lot of wasted time/energy.
Management is focused on bottom line and profit o
Company stresses internal accounting process rather than creative engineering and project management
AECOM is a very large public company traded on the NYSE that places too much emphasis on profit margins for all projects no matter the size of the project. A minimum 15% margin is required when the project is setup in the internal accounting system in order for the project to be approved for execution.. Most of my clients are counties, municipalities and state agencies with small budgets that rely on cooperative funding from other agencies to fund projects. Therefore, negotiating a project with a 15% margin can only be achieved if you limit the number of hours for staff working on the project. Working overtime at home after 5:00 pm and over the weekends for free is the only way to achieve a 15% profit margin. Performance for project managers is measured on meeting this profit margin. Therefore, raises for project managers are very small. Little to no emphasis on technical training. I recommend you budget personnel time and personal funds for technical training on software programs you need to perform your work because AECOM as a rule does not approve this training. However, AECOM does pay for continuing education through Red Vector, this is a plus. Unfortunately, Red Vector does not offer courses in many of the specialized software packages used by the engineering and architecture industry. AECOM spends too much time and effort on training employees on meaningless QA/QC procedures, safety protocols and internal accounting processes. They also conduct internal audit
ProsFlexible work hours, above average pay, can work in the office or at home, plenty of insurance options to choose from and opportunities to work in multiple business lines, IT is outsources over seas, however, they solve most problems in a reasonable time frame if you are persistent
ConsHigh utilization rates in excess of 90%, open office space with no privacy, invoicing and billing is outsourced overseas
Five days before my 41st birthday I was laid off after working a little over 11 years for this company.
I gave my all to this company and completely screwed up my work life balance by putting them first and at the expense of relationships with family/friends/significant others. I will not go into the details of what happened but will urge those looking to work for this company to practice self-love at all times by striving for a work life balance because nothing is ever guaranteed in this life and when you give your all to a company and you lose your job especially suddenly as I did without any notice whatsoever that this was coming, your world comes crumbling down and you are left feeling empty and with no desire to continue to live. What made it even worse was that I was a single income household and so losing my job meant I had to try to figure out where I was going to get the money to pay the mortgages/put food on the table/ensure that I had lights and heat as it was winter season in Colorado.
Do yourself a favor and learn to love yourself and make time for yourself because this company as with many large companies has a tendency to demand a lot from you and if you do not have firm boundaries set then it will be you to blame for having thrown away years of your life in an attempt to save your job or impress upon management so us to save your job. This is especially word of advice to foreigners moving to this country and having grown up with a very strong work eth
The office environment feels like a set from the 70's and 80's. It feels like that you are in a factory. Most of the people in the company has 20 or 30 years in the company, these people have taken years to move up the latter. Some like their jobs, most do not and have just stay for the money. Almost everyone do not like some things in the corporation which change policies, software or everything things. Most people just ask you to not look anything above the company, becuase you will not like it. Most assistance just ask you to just do your job and do not look into all the polititics or things that happen around. If you are new, there are a lot of young engineer and there will be a lot of rotation in the positions. People do not care who stay and who goes. There is no interest into grow the people in the company. If your passion is to develop a specific skill in design and with project this will give you the perfect opportunity to work and work and work in the same area. The reason there is no interest is growing peoples is based on the system. People apply in different areas of the company, and nobody care if people move inside the company. The system use the people until they are tire, or leave the company, get sick or die and then they are replace with other younger people. The culture is just do your job, move up, take the money and do not do anything else. You can get lost in the corporation and will stay in the cubical for the rest of your life. Any activity to grow yo
ProsA lot of work
ConsMost people are unhappy with their jobs, only to take the money home.
Too many chiefs and not enough Indians as the saying goes.
Prepare to be micromanaged at every turn by 7 different bosses, all knowing more than the other. (The lowest managers think they know the most). We had a lead, a supervisor, a district manager, a state manager, an HR manager, a safety manager, a training manager, and managers of managers, all to manage 15 people in the district (1 of 6 districts in the state serviced by AECOM). you get the point... They are extremely critical and as a top producer for every quarter I was there, top numbers every month for the entire state, it was never acknowledged by most managers, only conversations on how you could do more, or the district as a whole was failing, all while the ones that did nothing just kept doing nothing. The better you performed, the more they expected, the lazier ones just seemed to get a pass even sleeping in the truck on the job or watching full movies or football games while on duty. There is no sense of appreciation and the work is completely thankless. Pay for same work at different employers is close to 50% more. Extremely dangerous work for little pay. Employee morale was the lowest of any employer I have worked which is sad because I truly loved the job, but the management made it a completely toxic environment to the point that nobody cared anymore, the work was thankless and you were made to feel like you were nothing and replaceable. High turnover probably due to the reasons listed above. Onboarding should be called overboarding, watching countless
ProsSense of accomplishment with helping customers.
ConsToxic work environment, low employee morale, micromanagement, nothing you do matters to management.
I had to find a job after my employer went bankrupt. URS was the second company that offered me a position. I took them because the pay was dramatically better then the other private company.
I worked for then for one and half years. It was pretty much total hell the whole time. Me and one other employee started at the same time. We were pretty much put into isolation since day one. The manager and GM were both ex-miltary. They were not management material. But either they had moved up to a pay scale that required they become a manger, or had an inside track with the leadership.
As far as the co-workers go, If you weren't military they didn't want anything to do with you. If you had a degree they basically tried to show you up, and make you feel stupid.
The manager actually told us that if he doesn't like you he will make your life a living hell, until you resign. The last employee walked off the job after a few weeks, leaving his credentials on the managers desk. It was a classic hostile work environment, with the manager and his cronies that talk to other employees about you in front of others, sometimes right in front of them about you. Very unprofessional. But they know how to cover their tracks, they are professionals at that.
He had pulled the same thing with me and another person. We both managed to escape, I left for a much much better job, the other just went and quit without new work.
The GM wasn't any better, he had gotten complaints about the manag
Prosawful management, hostile work environment, not a team environment
ConsMade decent money long enough to find a healthy work environment
1.0
Environmental Scientist | Denver, CO | May 19, 2019
Worried about Management’s inability to understand and/or appreciate true diversity & employee grievances.
My experience with AECOM made me lose faith in fairness and equality in corporate America. Growing up in a foreign company, I was taught that a job is extremely important and you give your all. This I did. My job came to define me. I took great pleasure in thinking that I was adding value and helping my employer succeed. This dedication sadly was seemingly not appreciated by all and soon there was little to no feedback between my supervisor and I. My health suffered, relationships failed, my home life was neglected.
I continued to work to deliver because I was afraid to fail, make mistakes or be laid off, but despite it all, on October 10, 2018, I was laid off, under the claim of the position being eliminated for lack of enough work. This story changed later to poor performance which to this day I will never agree with.
My wish for AECOM is to work to change its approach in recognizing issues when reported. Do not immediately favor management because management is not always right. Take the extra step too, to truly understand issues brought up, as well as diverse personalities. This company prides itself on embracing diversity, but I did not see that practiced in my case.
For those thinking of interviewing with AECOM, set firm boundaries that protect work-life balance.
I am thankful for the opportunity to exercise my right to freedom of expression/freedom of speech by sharing my story/my experience at AECOM. My story while a painful one, is one with
Prepare to be a number, this company has bulldozer over small local companies sucking them up and spitting out the bones. This all happened before I even got there but in the wake I can see an entire office of biter people who no longer care about working together, are constantly throwing their coworkers under the bus to cover their butts and hoarding work for billability because you are always reminded you can be fired at the drop of a hat for not keeping your billability up. You will not be trained as no one wants to spend their time on non-billable work, so you will have to learn to fend for yourself, you will not be rewarded for hard work, you will see little to no raise after spending hours on your year end review because it really has nothing to do with performance, the only time you will be recognized is when somethings gone wrong and someone needs a scape goat. We actually got a letter from the CEO stating how much the company has profited (a lot!!!) and thanks for all your hard work right after being told there was not enough money for raises this year! Management is congested with work and don't seem to know how to delegate it leaving lower level workers without work, then because there is so much work and its not getting done they hire more lower level people to help out because they don't want to pay the slightly higher salary of a mid level person (or god forbid they train their current staff to become mid level. That would take unbillable work and they might hav
Prosi get payed on time i and i get health care
Consoppressing environment, no training, mentorship or upward mobility.
I work closely with IAMD Government personnel in scheduling and executing March Order and Emplacement (MO&E) of the IAMD Engagement Operations Center (EOC), Integrated Fire Control Network (IFCN) Relay and the Interactive Collaborative Environment (ICE), often on short notice and in harsh conditions, to ensure proper functionality on time to support IAMD’s stringent Test schedule requirements. I brief Fleet Logistics Support Directorate (FLSD) and IAMD senior managers on key issues which directly affect our ability to execute our mission such as; manpower funding, equipment readiness issues, travel discrepancies, and any/all safety issues. I develop and continually improve Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to ensure timely system emplacements to maximize efficiency and effectiveness based on IAMD wiring Inter-Connect Drawings (ICDs), Technical Manuals (TMs), and our experience in fielding systems. We support each of the IAMD Product Offices in the development and improvement of their hardware load plans, conduct of hardware trade studies, provide valuable feedback to influence Technical Data Package (TDP) and Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) development, provide Human Systems Integration (HSI) input, and ultimately influence all front end design efforts ensuring the 12 Integrated Product Support (IPS) elements are being considered during the design phase of this program in order to provide the best overall product for the Warfighter while reducing the overall
I've read quite a few negative postings on AECOM SWA CFT and felt the need to comment on some issues that have been unfavorable to the company.
Having spent the last 6 years as part of a management team for both AECOM and their predecessor L-3 Vertex, my background has allowed me to view things from both the ground and and operations level.
The compensation package is far less than what was paid to L-3 in the past. The major pain with this is the fact that the high rates which were paid to all is no longer available from the government as was when L-3 held the contract. Hourly compensation was also affected by the bidding process based on the need to be competitive on a Time & Materials contract. As a majority of the labor force lack civilian qualification or credentialing, the labor pay rate is roughly reflective of market value and average wages for those credentialed in a stagnant market. This may be surprising to most but it is the reality of the situation.
Areas that are very sensitive are primarily with the perceived lack of overtime compensation as well as a lack of benefits such as 401k and the like. Given that the workforce will have a 80-90% turnover on an annual basis, the business need for these benefits are marginal at best as they do cost overhead to operate. The lack of paid overtime over 48 hours and low per diem are reflective of the competitive nature of the winning award.
Based on my experience, AECOM was in compliance with Federal law with re
ProsOverseas Income Tax Exclusion, Team Environment, Promotion Potential
.Feedback – One of the necessary rules of selling is constant feedback from management. It is flabbergasting to me when employees do not understand their goal placement midway through the year and even more disconcerting when management communication only occurs in the fourth quarter. Similar to a coach on the football field maneuvering his troops, feedback is vital.
I learned to develop my skills such as:
Good communication skills (written and oral)
1. Having good communication skills in the workplace is all about being able to convey information to people clearly and simply, in a way that means things are understood and get done.
2. It’s about transmitting and receiving messages clearly, and being able to read your audience. It means you can do things like give and understand instructions, learn new things, make requests, ask questions and convey information with ease.
3. It also means that you can adapt yourself to new and different situations, read the behaviour of other people, compromise to reach agreement, and avoid and resolve conflict.
4. A large part of good communication is about being empathic, so you can understand how others will interpret your words and behavior. And don’t forget that communication is a two-way street, so being a good listener is vital.
Good critical thinking skills Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is
It was originally a USA-based building consulting company and listed in the New York stock exchange but lost its American management style.
Building construction consultancy firm s used to be held in high regards in the 80s and 90s. They command fees in the region of 12 to 18% of the construction contract sum.
Unfortunately, it has eroded to as low as 0.1% for large contracts. This price bashing phenomena has pushed consultancy firms to cut cost and to force engineers to undertake multi projects in order to be viable. The time allotted to each building project is heavily eroded and mistakes started to surface. Developers continues to reap in fantastic revenue due to booming real estate sales, driven by the rich Chinese from mainland and surrounding Asian countries.
Typically, the day started off with the Hong Kong boss browsing through the previous day's or week's meeting minutes. Items are singled out, especially the arduous task of detailed drawings/ plans that require drawing drafting personnel to complete. It can reach up to 50 to 60 sheets of AO size drawings, populated with lines and legends. M&E services typically comprised of air-con; mechanical ventilation; electrical; fire protection system; security system; lift/ elevators; plumbing and sanitary system; building automation system; green mark; refuse collection system and car parking system - a good 12 different services and all must be coordinated and interfaced to enable the entire development M&E system functions at its optimum.
Assuming that you have 30 sheets of drawings per service, this will translate to 360 sheets of drawings for checking. Y
ProsFree fruits once every month
ConsThe manpower shortages; managing razor-thin project; the need to answer for budget-burst projects.
I joined Aecom Government Services as an aviation support contractor. Expecting to join a team of organized professionals with common knowledge of specific airframes they were hired to work on. From the initial in-processing week up to the present day, to say I'm unimpressed would be a severe understatement. One disappointment after another, no pay for the entire week you're attending training and medical screenings. No pay while traveling to the work site you're assigned to. Once I arrived at my work site, I was unable to contact an Aecom representative for an hour, and it took them another hour just to pick me up from the terminal. Luckily they got me into housing pretty quickly, but the roommate they stuck me with was highly unhygienic, and they weren't willing to move me. After a month of complaining to my supervisor about the dirty roommate I was with, they finally moved me. As far as the work environment, the safety supervisor managed to add so many safety restrictions, we were actually hindered from completing aircraft maintenance in a safe and timely manner. To give you an idea of the lack of qualified aircraft mechanics at this site, I was promoted to team lead my second day on site, without ever touching a helicopter. Many of the mechanics here have little to no knowledge about the airframe they were assigned to maintain. Not only does this company pay the rock bottom of all salaries for this contract industry, the raise they gave me as a team lead, responsible for
ProsSupporting US military personnel
ConsPay, Management, Employees
5.0
Director of Public Relations | Doha | Feb 11, 2019
Good work environment , productive friendly professional mangement
Highlights:
• Contributed to the preparations for a successful opening event in April 2017 which was attended by the Prime Minister of Qatar and received extensive media coverage.
• Stellar role in promotional and marketing campaign for the new Orbital Highway and truck Route.
• Efficiently handling two projects concurrently.
• Secured Promotion in less than 6 months of joining the project for outstanding contribution.
Key Responsibilities:
• Manage all aspects of public relations and communications for New Orbital Highway Package 2 project of the Public Works Authority (Ashghal).
• Develop and implement operational processes for managing project communications assuring proactive communications with all stakeholders.
• Support Contractors in managing stakeholder communications ensuring on time and accurate dissemination of information as required under the contract.
• Formulate and execute public relations plans with annual calendars, events and budgets to address communication needs with various stakeholders. Evaluate and update the PR plan periodically to ensure continued effectiveness.
• Prepare all media announcements related to the project and manage all visual documentation including arranging of photo shoots across the project progress stages.
• Deal with complaints related to the project, coordinating with relevant departments to develop and execute mitigation plans for satisfactory resolution of issues.
• Produce 2 reports on a monthly basis for the
ProsCompany cares to retain its employees
Consnot taing so many projects in qatar
Questions And Answers about AECOM
What would you suggest AECOM management do to prevent others from leaving?
Asked Mar 15, 2017
Treat your employees like human beings and not work machines that have nothing better to do than work 70 hours a week and only get paid for 40 of those.
Answered Jun 22, 2021
Get a better benefit package insurance sucks vacation time and sick days are the same thing
Answered Aug 18, 2019
What tips or advice would you give to someone interviewing at AECOM?
Asked Sep 13, 2016
Dont do it. Managers falsify company metrics to meet their goals and they also lie about completed work orders. Safety is expensive so if they cant get a Safety Manager in the contract they expect the site Supervisor to do all the work. They are always trying to get more out of you for less. They expect you to work on your vacations and also be available 24/7 in case someone hurts themselves the site Supervisor needs to drive them to and from the hospital. It doesn't matter what time of day it is either. Overall it's a horrible place to work and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
Answered May 26, 2019
Run as fast as you can away from that place!!!
Answered Feb 17, 2019
What is the best part of working at AECOM?
Asked Dec 25, 2019
Working for a company that makes employees feel valued
Answered May 6, 2022
I have a great team and supportive manager
Answered May 4, 2022
If you were to leave AECOM, what would be the reason?
Asked Mar 23, 2017
The pay. And if you get a raise its only 2 percent. No matter what you do, it will still be 2 percent. So yeah I would leave because of the pay.
Answered Jan 31, 2021
Better pay
Answered Jan 18, 2021
How long does it take to get hired from start to finish at AECOM? What are the steps along the way?
Asked Jun 30, 2016
When I applied there was a lot of turnover in HR so I went through two different recruitment reps and overall it took four months to be offered the position.
