Case Study

Global Engineering Services business

Rapidly responding to market reality and strategic objectives through developing a leaner more effective organisational structure for a large engineering services business.

 The Situation

Our client is a large, global engineering services company, servicing the hydrocarbons, minerals and metals and chemical sectors globally. One of their North American operations had over 2300 staff, primarily engaged in engineering services in the hydrocarbons sector. The operations had grown rapidly as a result of high-demand for its services and acquisitions. 

Through that time, the structure had simply evolved to a state at odds with the direction of the business, including over-layering in the structure, operational silos and roles essential to strategy implementation missing altogether.

In a very competitive market, and with a clear and challenging strategic plan, change was required to the organisation’s structure to ensure alignment of leaders and their teams to the work essential for the business to be successful. This included positioning them to extend their services into existing and new sectors, and to add other services such as construction management across these sectors.

Primary goals for the business through this process were to continue operations ‘business as usual’ and achieve significant EBIT improvement. 

Approach

Collaborating with the executive team, Advisian was engaged to lead a review and redesign of the organisation. 

Given its strategic objective and operating context, and strong underpinning design principles, our approach included:

  • Extensive desktop research

  • Staff and customer engagement to identify strengths and gaps in the organisation structure

Through this process, we were able to identify issues with the business systems, staffing and leadership – all integral to the analysis and reshaping of the organisation. 

We understand that organisation structure must continually change and adapt to business circumstances and strategy. Our approach is to focus on building internal client knowledge and understanding as a key principle in the design of sustainable improvement. 

In this way, we were able to lead the design of the new, strategically-aligned structure and key roles, but with deep understanding and support from the executive project team, who in turn, took ownership in the implementation and change management phase of the work.

Results 

Results were summed up by the project leader on the executive team: 

‘Primary goals for the business through this process were to continue operations “business as usual” and achieve significant EBIT improvement. We accomplished that and EBIT improvement at the same time’.

 

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