AECOM Technologies – Global Engineering Firm

IT Organizational Assessment & Redesign

The Challenge

An $8B engineering firm with offices in over 80 counties had an extremely complex IT organizational model. It had offerings on 5 continents, both commercial and governmental. IT decision making was centralized in the U.S.; but authority for additional IT spend was also allocated to individual geographic regions, as well as specific business sectors; such as their Government division. The company also had both a corporate CIO and CTO in the U.S. and multiple CIOs abroad; with unclear lines of authority and reporting.

As a result, the company had significant trouble tracking IT spend, making decisions regarding new IT projects or completing those underway.

The company sought to devise a new model with clearer lines of authority, quicker and simper decision making and more transparency with regard to IT spend.

The TBI Solution

TBI provided a senior ex-CIO and COO to lead this organizational review. Guided by him, the team interviewed over 45 members of Executive Management, regional & business unit management, as well as central & global IT leaders. TBI also evaluated the IT skills and leadership abilities of the corporate CIO & CTO. A gap analysis was built of the current state vs. the “desired” state of IT. We evaluated the roles, strengths and weakness of the IT organization. We measured that evaluation against the proposed strategic plan for IT in order to determine the organization’s fitness to deliver on that plan.

The Results

The company followed TBI’s recommendation and:

  • Consolidated the CIO & CTO roles into one senior position.
  • Established a search plan (with TBI participation) to hire a new and more experienced Global CIO.
  • Consolidated decision making and spend into a more centralized IT organization.
  • Flattened out the matrixed IT organizations by establishing a super-regional CIO reporting structure with direct lines of responsibility to the new Global CIO.
  • Created a detailed action plan and an associated budget for the new IT organizational structure including a timeframe, a start date, status end dates, and budget.
  • Developed a metrics program to better assure delivery on projects, create transparency on IT performance and communicate results more concisely to the Executive Committee.
  • Implemented a change management and communication plan to soften the impacts of change on the IT organization.
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