Engineering Recruitment, Engineers Recruitment, Engineering Employment, Engineering Professionals, Engineering Jobs, WA, Australia

Consulting engineering giant, Sinclair Knight Merz, has acquired Melbourne strategy consultancy, McLennan Magasanik Associates, as the fight for prized acquisitions in the engineering sector hots up. It follows a spate of similar tie-ups both in the domestic market and internationally. SKM is also back in hiring mode, having 400 positions vacant after shedding about 600 staff in the past two years. Hiring will be in different fields to those recently retrenched. SKM Chief Executive, Paul Dougas, says the type of work SKM is engaged in is less in building and industrial, more studies, and more in sustainable and renewables – in particular assisting mining clients with that transition. Gaining a foothold in new markets is behind much of the engineering consolidation, compounded by an acute shortage of skilled professional engineers. Demand for white-collar engineering talent is extreme, particularly in oil, mining, gas and rail – and to cope with the shortages, SKM encourages staff to use virtual teaming to leverage resources in offices outside Australia.

Excerpt from: Business Review Weekly (www.brw.com.au), 26 August 2010