New Delhi, Mar 12: Looking to expand in India, US-based infrastructure design and consultancy giant AECOM plans to hire 1,500 new employees here as it prepares to participate in initiatives like Smart Cities and Make in India, including for the ports and defence sectors.
The USD 20-billion group, which currently has 2,500 employees in India, is also looking to tap opportunities in Clean Ganga and Clean India initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, its global CEO Michael S Burke said today.
"It is the right time to be in India when administration is taking all right steps to grow the economy," said Burke, who is here to tap new business opportunities and meet top government officials with regard to its interest in various government and P-3 (Public-Private Partnership) programmes for infrastructure and other sectors.
Burke said that AECOM is already involved in some capacity with all of the ten biggest infrastructure projects in India and the country presents much more growth opportunities for the group and its share could grow further going forward in the overall global business of the group.
AECOM, which has eminent banker Deepak Parekh on its global advisory board, is providing consultancy services for various mega projects in India with total construction cost of over USD 22.5 billion.
"Business is growing quite significantly in India. We currently plan to hire 1,500 new employees including architects and engineers and our efforts would be very much linked to the Prime Minister's Make in India initiative," Burke said.
He said AECOM can participate in this programme in a big way, given its experience of having worked with all top manufacturing companies of the world.
When asked what was the impression the foreign companies have about the new government and whether they had any concerns about factors like ease of doing business, Burke said that the new government is very actively reaching out to the global community and that was sending right signals.
"The government is reaching out to the global investors and we can help on that," he said during a media interaction.
Among others, it is currently executing major projects across sectors like urban development, highways, transportation, environment, master planning and energy-efficient building engineering.
Globally, it has nearly 100,000 employees and is ranked as the world's biggest engineering design firm by revenue. It has been involved in providing its services for mega projects like Ground Zero reconstruction in New York, Rio Olympics in Brazil, Tokyo Olympics in Japan as well as for the London Olympics.
In the Middle East, the company managed development of the Saadiyat Island cultural district in Abu Dhabi in the UAE.
In Asia, the company has successfully designed, engineered and supervised the construction of eight out of 11 new towns in Hong Kong.
