Dive Brief:
- For the sixth year in a row, Fluor has landed at the top of Fortune's list of the world's most admired engineering and construction companies.
- Fluor was followed on the list by EMCOR Group, Jacobs Engineering Group, Peter Kiewit Sons' and AECOM.
- Fortune ranked Fluor the highest in the categories of people management, financial soundness, long-term investment value, quality of products/services, quality of management and global competitiveness.
Dive Insight:
Second-place EMCOR also garnered Fortune's highest scores in innovation, use of corporate assets and social responsibility, while Kiewit's quality of management earned it high marks. All of these companies are powerhouses in the engineering, construction and design industries.
Fluor was recently awarded a $1.2 billion contract to engineer, build and manage the new $1.8 billion, 800,000-square-foot Novo Nordisk diabetes API plant in Clayton, NC. Fluor also provided design services for the plant, which is scheduled to be structurally complete in 2019 and operational in 2020.
Fluor and other project stakeholders haven't had as much luck with the $5.6 billion Purple Line rail project in Maryland. Fluor leads the public-private partnership group Purple Line Partners that will finance, design, build, operate and maintain the light-rail system if and when it's given the green light. A federal judge vacated approval of the project last year, a decision that also shelved a $900 million federal grant, while ridership figures were re-evaluated by the Federal Transit Administration. Project proponents could catch a break, however, as the Purple Line made the 50-project list of President Donald Trump's high-priority infrastructure projects.
AECOM also recently made news with its announcement that it would rebrand two of its U.S. acquisitions, Tishman Construction and Hunt Construction, as AECOM Tishman and AECOM Hunt, in the wake of the companies' combined double-digit growth. AECOM Tishman is taking on construction of One Vanderbilt Place, a $3 billion high-rise going up next to Grand Central Station. On the other coast, AECOM Hunt has been selected, along with joint venture partner Turner Construction, to build the new $2.6 billion Los Angeles Rams stadium.
