| Type | Public limited company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Engineering, Environmental, Planning & Management consultancy |
| Founded | As Freeman Fox, 1857 |
| Headquarters | London United Kingdom 50 Offices Worldwide |
| Key people | Ivor Catto, Chief Executive Russell Down, Finance Director |
| Revenue | £308.6m (year ended 31 March 2010) |
| Employees | 4,200 |
| Website | Hyder Consulting |
Hyder Consulting is a multi-national advisory and design consultancy with particular specialisation in the transport, property, utilities and environmental sectors. The firm employs approximately 4,200 people across the UK, Europe, Germany, Middle East, Asia and Australia and has been listed on the London Stock Exchange since October 2002. The name Hyder is the Welsh word for "confidence".[1]
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Through the 20th century, Freeman Fox & Partners built an international reputation in the field of bridges and highways. Founded by Sir Charles Fox in partnership with his son Sir Charles Douglas Fox in 1860, Sir Charles Fox and Sons later became Douglas Fox & Partners. The firm was later joined by partners Sir Ralph Freeman (who had worked for the firm since 1901, later becoming a partner) and Sir Gilbert Roberts, and in 1938 became as Freeman, Fox and Partners in 1938, and later Acer Freeman Fox.[2]
The firm was responsible for the design of projects such as the Victoria Falls Bridge (1905), the Sydney Harbour Bridge (1932), the Forth Road Bridge (1964), the Severn Bridge (1966), the Bosphorus Bridge (1973), the Humber Bridge (1981), and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge (1988). Other notable projects included the Parkes radio telescope (1961), the 46m Algonquin Radio Observatory (1965), and Melbourne's West Gate Bridge (1978), in which the company's structural design was held partly responsible for a collapse in 1970 that killed 35 workers.
Over the same period John Taylor & Sons built its reputation in water and wastewater engineering with projects such as the Shanghai water supply project and major water and sewerage projects in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and Tehran.
The two firms merged in 1987 to form Acer Consultants. Over the next few years, several smaller specialist firms were incorporated to form a worldwide infrastructure and civil engineering consultancy.
The company and another consultant Wallace Evans Ltd was acquired by Welsh Water in 1993 and renamed Hyder Consulting in 1996. When Hyder Consulting was bought by Western Power Distribution, the senior management of Hyder Consulting instigated a management buy-out, completed in January 2001. The firm then listed on the London Stock Exchange in October 2002. They now employ approximately 4,200 staff worldwide and operate in development infrastructure including civil engineering, utilities, environment, buildings, geotechnics and transportation.
Since 2002, Hyder has acquired a number of UK based companies to widen its capabilities and service base. These include:
More recent landmark projects include Taiwan High Speed Rail, the Melbourne CityLink and EastLink (Melbourne) tollways, Hong Kong Greening Master Plan, Ski Dubai, the Burj Khalifa,[3] and the Cairo Wastewater Project.
On 28 August 2008, Hyder announced they had won a landmark project to build a new eye catching twin leaf bascule bridge (Te Wero Bridge) in Auckland City Harbour.
The Group's Interim Management Statement issued on 12 February 2009 (http://ww1.investorrelations.co.uk/hyderir/newscentre/pressreleases/release.jsp?ref=59) stated: "Following a review of our operations by the new Executive team, we are restructuring in order to streamline and better align our service offerings with the markets and sectors in which we operate. In addition, we have responded to market conditions by reducing our headcount and overhead expenditure. As a result of these initiatives, headcount will reduce by 8% and one-off, exceptional costs of approximately £8m will be incurred in the second half year, leading to anticipated annualised cost savings of some £4m. The Board will remain vigilant in managing the Group’s operations through the current global downturn."