With more than half its 16 million people living below flood levels, the Netherlands has become expert in taming coasts and rivers. Dutch engineer Royal HaskoningDHV is exploiting that expertise globally—particularly in emerging economies—as a key edge in a world of intensifying design competition.
Formed by the 2012 merger of Royal Haskoning Group and DHV Group to propel that growth, the Amersfoort-based company now has more than 7,000 worldwide staff who generated net sales of $713 million last year—just over half overseas in some 100 offices in 35 countries. Key hubs in the U.K. and South Africa employ about 1,600 staffers.
“The main result of the merger was that we are far more able to go for the big projects available in the world,” says Chairman Erik Oostwegel, 49, a Royal Haskoning former chief who took over the enlarged firm in 2014. “There is a tendency with all clients to go for service providers [that] can offer an integrated approach.”
The firm has trebled the number of jobs with fees in the $11-million range since the merger, he adds. The merged firm is still small by global standards, concedes Oostwegel. “I could imagine being twice our current size,” he says. HaskoningDHV now is larger in Holland than its leading Amsterdam-based rival, ARCADIS N.V., but that firm has become a 28,000-employee global behemoth through key acquisitions.