ENVIRONMENTAL consulting firm RPS Group has boosted its position in the Perth market with the recent acquisition of water resource and environmental consultancy Aquaterra Consulting.
ENVIRONMENTAL consulting firm RPS Group has boosted its position in the Perth market with the recent acquisition of water resource and environmental consultancy Aquaterra Consulting.
UK-listed RPS has grown to be the third largest environmental services group operating in WA, according to new research for WA Business News Book of Lists.
The list is headed by Sinclair Knight Merz with 214 environmental professionals in WA, followed by URS Australia (135) and RPS Group (113).
RPS has grown on the back of its $13.5 million acquisition of Aquaterra, a move designed to strengthen its natural resource opportunities.
Founded in Perth 12 years ago, Aquaterra has about 90 staff across Australia. In the year to March 2010 it had revenue of $18.2 million and profit before tax of $2.5 million.
Brisbane-based Cardno is another group to have grown through acquisitions, including of building services company ITC Group.
The ITC deal was expected to meet the anticipated demand in environmental auditing services.
Industry participants agree there has been more activity in recent months, but it hasn’t been quite the same scale as it was in the mid 2000s.
Ecologia managing director Garry Connell said that, during the last resources boom, the demand for environmental services was such that the industry couldn’t deliver.
“Everybody was going crazy trying to keep up with the existing work let alone look for new work,” Mr Connell said. “So that allowed quite a proliferation of new consultants to enter the industry.”
“And to get a foothold in the industry, often new players discount their rates to win work and that’s detrimental to everyone because even if the work quality is there, the overall margins the business operates at become thinner.”
Mr Connell said the upside was that the high amount of activity in the sector translated into a broader skill base.
Another change has been the tilting of work from government, infrastructure and land development projects to complex mines, railways and ports – often rolled together.
“During the past five years we’ve seen a steady shift and a significant part of our business is resource-related,” GHD manager environmental David Horne said.
“These projects are larger and often more complex, so project management is a critical part of delivering environmental solutions.”
Mr Horne said that the new generation of projects required a sophisticated approach – larger teams with a broader diversity of technical skills.
“So partly in response to that we have seen some consolidation among local firms in the past few years,” he said.
“RPS, Cardno and Coffey are an example of very large consulting firms looking to acquire niche skills.”
