The architect/engineering/construction/management industry is going through some tough times right now, as the energy sector tries to deal with falling oil prices and the Federal government tries to deal with its sequestration-fueled budget cuts. One of the industry leaders for the past couple of decades has been CH2M Hill, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. We’ve written about CH2M Hill a few times and, although we’ve found aspects of the company’s management decisions to criticize, we have never lost our admiration for such a respected firm.

We noticed the company is making some changes which we suspect are designed to better position it to survive the current industry downdrafts and move forward. How the company adapts and changes, and moves forward, presents a story we find fairly interesting. We hope you’ll agree.

First, CH2M Hill announced in April that it was rebranding and changing its name to CH2M. According to the quotes in the linked article, the rebranding is in recognition of the company’s growth – now approaching annual revenues of $6 billion – and its new business strategy. We were unable to discover much about the new “refreshed” strategy after some fruitless Google searches, but it may have something to do with the decision to retain the company’s Alaskan oil and gas business. CH2M had announced an interest in selling the business in late 2014, so as to focus on “core infrastructure services and functions including water, transportation and environment.” But in mid-January decided not to sell it after all—foregoing the cash infusion the sale would have brought in to the employee-owned company.

Instead, CH2M just sold a minority interest to Apollo Global Management, LLC—bringing in $300 million. According to the linked article—

Apollo also will be awarded additional shares each year as annual dividends …

CH2M says that Apollo will buy $200 million in convertible preferred stock when the deal closes in the second quarter and $100 million within a year. The deal values CH2M at about $2 billion. [CH2M] plans to use the investment for growth and to pay down debt.

So things are looking up for CH2M. As this article/advertisement claims--

‘CH2M had one of its best first quarters ever, pushing us into a major growth mode,’ said CH2M Global Business Groups President Greg McIntyre. ‘With our global reputation for being a best place to work and a most ethical company, this is an excellent opportunity to join an amazing company. I have spent my entire 33-year career at CH2M and have never seen our future look brighter. We have several great opportunities for staff to work on exciting projects with our valued clients, in all our sectors.’

CH2M seeks to hire professionals who meet each day with integrity and are motivated to bring fresh energy and enterprise into every community we touch.

But while the future looks bright, CH2M has to let go of the past in order to move forward. And speaking of ethics and integrity, we are compelled to note that on June 3, 2015, the last of 12 “admitted criminal conspirators” in a widespread timecard falsification scheme was sentenced to two years’ of probation and a fine. For another take on the timecard debacle, here’s a link to a different article. In addition, we’ve written about that little fiasco on this site in a couple of articles. You can find the articles using the site’s keyword search but, really, why bother? It’s all history now and CH2M is moving forward.