Buying Advice in a Consolidated Market: What Good Looks Like

Disclosure. The author runs an independent consultancy that competes with several of the firms named here. Every figure is referenced so it can be checked.

The market for construction advice in Britain has changed shape in a single working lifetime. Of the thirty largest consultancies working here, seventeen are now owned from overseas, and only two of the top ten, Mott MacDonald and Arup, are British-owned: about a quarter of the top ten's UK fees ¹. AECOM bought Davis Langdon in 2010 ². SNC-Lavalin bought Atkins in 2017 ³. CBRE bought 60% of Turner & Townsend in 2021 and took 70% of the combined business in January 2025 ⁴⁵. WSP bought Capita's property arm and Wood's environment business in 2022 ⁶⁷, and in 2026 bid twice for Arcadis before withdrawing its offer in September ⁸⁹. In March 2026 Goldman Sachs Alternatives took control of Mace Consult ¹⁰.

None of those deals was wrong in itself. But together they change what a client is buying when it buys advice, and what it has to do to get the advice it needs. This piece is about that: what good practice looks like, for clients, for firms and for government, in a market with fewer, larger and more often overseas-owned advisers.

What has changed for the buyer

Four things matter to a client, whatever it thinks about ownership.

Fewer independent voices. On a large programme the client's adviser, the delivery partner and the independent reviewer can increasingly come from the same small group of firms, or even the same firm. Each appointment can be defensible and the combination still leaves nobody with a reason to say the scheme is wrong.

Acquisition does not create capacity. When one firm buys another, no new professional enters the market: an acquisition moves people between employers rather than adding to their number. The capacity a client needs comes from training, not from deals.

The work may be done somewhere else. Large firms deliver part of their technical work from overseas centres. Arcadis, for example, reports that the contribution of its Global Excellence Centers rose to 15% in the first half of 2025, from 13% a year earlier ¹¹. That can be efficient. But a client that does not ask where its work is done cannot weigh the trade-offs.

The capability to challenge is thinning. In a 2025 RICS global survey, 87% of respondents said a shortage of skills was having a moderate (60%) or critical (27%) impact on their profession ¹². Yet in a review of thirteen major firms' UK reporting, none published UK training spend, and only one published a current UK apprentice count ¹³. The industry's shortage is widely asserted and hard to check.

Best practice for clients

1. Separate the roles that need to disagree. Appoint the adviser who shapes the scheme, the partner who delivers it and the reviewer who tests it from organisations with no common ownership, and check ownership at group level, not by brand. Ask each bidder to declare every other role its group holds on the programme. Independence is a structural property, not a statement in a bid.

2. Buy the people, not the logo. Name the individuals who will do the work, evaluate them, and hold them with key-person provisions and a right of approval over replacements. A consolidated firm's reputation belongs to the group; the judgement you are paying for belongs to the people in the room.

3. Ask where the work is done. Require bidders to state the share of delivery hours performed outside the UK, and where, and to describe the review and security arrangements around it. Offshore delivery is not a problem to be banned; it is a fact to be priced and managed.

4. Keep an intelligent client. Retain enough in-house capability to understand, question and, where necessary, reject the advice you are buying. A client that depends entirely on a handful of large advisers slowly loses the ability to test what they say, and becomes a buyer of reassurance.

5. Design frameworks for plurality. Lot structures and selection criteria decide who can compete. Very large single-supplier lots and track-record thresholds that only the largest firms can meet narrow the field before the first bid is scored. Keep lots proportionate, test the people who will deliver rather than only corporate track record, and leave room for specialist and independent firms. The Procurement Act 2023 requires contracting authorities to consider dividing contracts into lots and to have regard to barriers facing smaller suppliers ²⁰.

6. Reward challenge. Say in the brief that you expect advisers to challenge the scheme, the programme and the estimate, and score it. Make it safe to tell you the answer you did not want: a clear escalation route to the sponsor, and no penalty for the adviser who does.

7. Make training a condition, not a hope. Ask bidders for their UK trainee intake and training investment, and weigh it. The measure already exists: The 5% Club asks members to commit at least 5% of their UK workforce to apprentice, sponsored-student or graduate programmes ¹³. Ridge, a mid-size British partnership and a Gold member of The 5% Club, publishes a current UK apprentice figure ¹³. Scale does not prevent disclosure.

Best practice for firms

• Publish UK trainee intake and training spend, every year, in the annual or sustainability report, not only in recruitment material. If scale is the route to a bigger pipeline, the firms with the most scale can show it.
• Publish the share of work delivered offshore, and how it is reviewed. It is easier to explain a number than an absence.
• Protect the awkward voice. The value of an adviser is the willingness to tell a client the scheme is wrong. Structures that measure only utilisation and margin will, over time, remove it. Senior people need the standing, and the backing, to say no.
• Keep independent assurance independent. Where a group holds delivery roles on a programme, it should decline the review role, and say so.

Best practice for government and the institutions

• Put consultancies inside a training fund, or say plainly that there isn't one. Contractors pay the CITB levy and can apply for CITB training grants. CITB's scope excludes consultancy, surveying and architectural design as stand-alone activities, so a pure consultancy pays no CITB levy and has no CITB fund to draw on; it pays the Apprenticeship Levy only if its pay bill exceeds £3m ¹⁴.
• Keep a route in for career changers. From 1 January 2026, new Level 7 apprenticeships are funded only for people aged 16 to 21, with limited exceptions ¹⁵. That removes public funding for most mid-career entrants to the Level 7 routes into the built environment professions, including architecture and planning.
• Look at the market once, before the next deal. Audit is the warning. In 2019 the CMA found the four largest firms taking over 99% of FTSE 350 audit fees ¹⁶ and recommended structural remedies. Separation was introduced only on a non-statutory basis, and in January 2026 the Government confirmed it was scrapping the Audit Reform Bill ¹⁷. Construction consultancy advises on a large share of Britain's public infrastructure spending, and I can find no public record of any UK competition review of concentration in it ¹⁸. The CMA can review mergers here that meet its jurisdictional thresholds ¹⁹.

The test

A client in a consolidated market can still buy excellent, independent advice. But it no longer arrives by default. It has to be designed into the appointment: roles that can disagree, named people, visible delivery, a client able to test the answer, frameworks that let the full market compete, and a brief that rewards being told no.

The question for every sponsor is simple. On your largest programme, who is paid to tell you the scheme should not proceed, and do they work for the same group as the people delivering it?

Sources

1. Building, "Top 150 Consultants 2026: the main table" (UK fee and staff figures self-reported by firms). https://www.building.co.uk/focus/top-150-consultants-2026-the-main-table/5144031.article. The ownership classification of the top 30 is the author's own audit as at 22 September 2026 (17 overseas-owned, 13 UK-owned; top ten c.£8.67bn UK fees, of which Mott MacDonald and Arup c.£2.28bn, about 26%). Ownership moves quickly; the count is dated. WSP withdrew its Arcadis offer on 22 September 2026, so the count is unchanged.
2. AECOM, acquisition of Davis Langdon, 2010. https://investors.aecom.com/news-releases/news-release-details/aecom-acquire-davis-langdon-us324-million-transaction
3. SNC-Lavalin, "SNC-Lavalin completes transformative acquisition of WS Atkins", 3 July 2017. https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/snc-lavalin-completes-transformative-acquisition-of-ws-atkins-632222213.html
4. CBRE, acquisition of majority interest in Turner & Townsend, 2021. https://ir.cbre.com/press-releases/detail/46/cbre-completes-acquisition-of-majority-interest-in-and
5. CBRE, Turner & Townsend project management combination completed, January 2025. https://ir.cbre.com/press-releases/detail/243/cbre-group-completes-turner-townsendproject-management
6. WSP, completion of Capita REI and GL Hearn acquisition, September 2022. https://www.wsp.com/en-gl/news/2022/wsp-completes-acquisition-of-capita-rei-and-gl-hearn
7. WSP, completion of Wood Environment & Infrastructure acquisition, September 2022. https://www.wsp.com/en-gl/news/2022/wsp-completes-acquisition-of-the-environment-infrastructure-business-of-john-wood-group-plc
8. WSP, "WSP announces decision to withdraw proposed offer for Arcadis N.V.", 22 September 2026. https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/09/22/3366803/0/en/wsp-announces-decision-to-withdraw-proposed-offer-for-arcadis-n-v.html
9. Arcadis, "Arcadis comments on WSP's decision to not proceed with its offer", 23 September 2026. https://www.arcadis.com/en/news/global/2026/arcadis-comments-on-wsps-decision-to-not-proceed-with-its-offer
10. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Mace Consult investment completed, March 2026. https://am.gs.com/en-us/advisors/news/press-release/2026/mace-goldman-sachs-alternatives
11. Arcadis, Q2 and half-year 2025 results (Global Excellence Centers' contribution 15%, from 13%). https://www.arcadis.com/en/news/global/2025/7/arcadis-q2-and-half-year-2025-results
12. RICS, Surveying skills report 2025, October 2025, Figure 1 (global survey). https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/reports/Surveying-skills-report-2025.pdf
13. Author's disclosure review, 23 September 2026, of the UK annual, sustainability, gender pay gap and social value reporting of AtkinsRéalis, WSP, AECOM, Arcadis, Mott MacDonald, Arup, Turner & Townsend, Stantec, Jacobs, Gleeds, Ridge, Currie & Brown and Gardiner & Theobald. Ridge Social Value Report 2024 (80 apprentices; Gold member of The 5% Club): https://ridge.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Ridge-Social-Value-Report-for-2024.pdf. "Not published" means no figure was found, not that a firm does not train. The 5% Club membership as reported in that review.
14. CITB, "Should you register with CITB" (consultancy, surveying and architectural design out of scope as stand-alone activities). https://www.citb.co.uk/levy/should-you-register-with-citb
15. Department for Education, Apprenticeship funding rules 2025 to 2026, paras 28-28.1. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6936acd76a167b6884b7360e/Funding_Rules_2025_to_2026.pdf
16. CMA, Statutory audit services market study, final report, 18 April 2019, para 2.2. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d03667d40f0b609ad3158c3/audit_final_report_02.pdf
17. Department for Business and Trade, 20 January 2026 (Audit Reform Bill dropped). https://www.gov.uk/government/news/business-secretary-backs-british-scaleups-with-growth-package-and-red-tape-review
18. Author's search of gov.uk/cma-cases and Parliamentary publications, 22 September 2026. Pre-2014 records are not reliably searchable, so this is an absence of public record, not proof that no review took place.
19. CMA, guidance on jurisdiction and procedure (CMA2), 28 October 2025. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6900e39e87219d3b21b9aa9c/mergers_guidance_on_the_CMA_s_jurisdiction_and_procedure.pdf
20. Procurement Act 2023, s.12(4) (have regard to barriers facing SMEs) and s.18 (duty to consider lots). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/contents