AECOM reviews

3.7

69% would recommend to a friend

(11,146 total reviews)
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Troy Rudd

79% approve of CEO

60% positive business outlook

AECOM has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 11,146 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The AECOM employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

11K reviews
1.0
Mar 29, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very few pros associated with this company, the few outstanding technical people are leaving as fast as they can find new positions. If you are fortunate enough to have good people in your office, your experience may not be as bad but, trust me, it is far from good. PLEASE read several reviews and look for FACTS.

Cons

So very many... The new layout in every office is going to be migrated to the open format, like a call center or an old-time bull pen, VERY distracting. This is STRICTLY an accounting decision, no thought has been given to employee health or satisfaction. Project managers who have 25 years of seniority (and a lot of reference material) are shoved into a working space no larger than 5 x 5 ft. Google the effects of this type of layout on employees. Vacation days have been reduced every few years, we are currently seven days plus one floating holiday. Insurance is outrageously expensive and all benefits are below industry standard. Accounting, IT, and management is HEAVY in this company, backbreaking heavy, unbearably heavy (you get the idea); and SO inefficient, it is an unbelievable joke. Administrative staff have been cut across the board so our clients are paying senior people several hundred dollars an hour to make copies, file, and assemble reports. AECOM does NOT pay their bills on time while simultaneously demanding early payment from clients, looks like they have a serious cash flow problem. To get software necessary for a job takes 4 - 6 weeks because of the multitude of approvals it must go through, and if said software requires a dongle to run, guess what, several more weeks of waiting for it to be shipped to Massachusetts to get "logged" before they send it to you...when they feel like it. You are not permitted to install software on your own machine, which I understand for certain levels, for programmers, this is an absurd situation. The accounting system is beyond heinous. It is bloated, inefficient, nearly impossible to understand (and there are some smart people here!), and USELESS. You can be 90% billable for years, have one month where you drop below 70%, they force you to use your vacation, followed by mandatory standby leave of absence (no pay of course), then you will be riffed. No time is permitted to do marketing, you are told that you MUST get 40 hours billable and then do business development ON YOUR OWN TIME. They have outsourced IT to MEXICO...what few good, useful people are left in the US IT are overworked and treated poorly. They are blamed for upper management's poor decisions BY UPPER MANAGEMENT! External training and conferences are HIGHLY discouraged, if not outright denied. They have sent out employee surveys to "Make Amazing Happen Here". I can assure you, the only thing happening here is mediocrity. I understand if you are desperate for a job and have to take one here, but get out as soon as you can. EVERYTHING is broken from management down to entry level employee morale.

1.0
Feb 4, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Because of their sheer size, they should have the potential to be very powerful. They have the potential to negotiate preferential benefit packages.

Cons

Because of their size and their inability to communicate within, they are ineffective. Bureaucracy runs rampant at AECOM. There are so many procedures and policies related to enhancing their stock value that project performance suffers. Much of the day is spent reading pat-me-on-the-back emails not related to client satisfaction. Legacy URS employees have seen a gradual decrease in benefit value since their acquisition and it seems to be shrinking daily. Transparency in this regard does not exist. Technology is proclaimed to be a priority for AECOM, but apps and software are full of holes and inadequate. IT is overwhelmed with no help on the horizon. It seems as though AECOM is forcing its workforce to downsize itself by "natural" means. Contrary to what they say, it is not a friendly place to work.

1.0
Jan 2, 2016

Hot mess

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's a big company with a broad spectrum of experience available for technical people.

Cons

So many, and some of the worst communication and 'efficiency' I've seen in any company. Since being acquired by AECOM our senior technical staff have steadily moved on to other companies due to the constantly changing policies, emphasis on technical staff being held responsible for completing highly specific financial metrics with no assistance, poor to no communication regarding organizational structure, arbitrary and constantly changing corporate focus. For a company that's 'run by accountants' the way the finance side is handled is terrible - inefficient, unprofitable, many of our vendors are refusing to work for us due to late payment, project managers spend more time jumping through hoops to report numbers than actually doing the work that brings in the $$.

Viewing 43 - 45 of 11,146 Reviews

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