“Diversity” in the Building Design + Construction article means business diversification, not workforce diversity. The August 11, 2010 article looks back at the building-market boom of 2000 and explains how architecture, engineering, and construction firms pursued growth by entering more sectors, working in more countries, adding services, buying capabilities, and deepening relationships with major clients.
Jacobs Engineering Group is the article’s clearest example. In the period described, Jacobs completed the first phase of acquiring the engineering and contracting business of Dutch company Stork NV, reported billings more than 30 percent above 1999, and said that more than 16 percent of revenue came from international work. Those are historical, article-reported figures from around 2000—not current company or industry statistics.
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What “diversity” meant in this construction-business story
The article uses diversity as shorthand for a broader business mix. A firm could diversify by serving additional building sectors, expanding geographically, adding design and construction capabilities, or taking responsibility for more stages of a project. The objective was to make one client relationship produce several kinds of work rather than relying on a single service or market.
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1Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsThat definition matters because the article is sometimes easy to misread as a discussion of workforce inclusion. It is not. Its subject is the way professional-services and contracting firms positioned themselves for growth during a particular building cycle.
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The five routes described
- Market diversification: pursuing sectors such as education, health care, and correctional facilities instead of depending on one building type.
- Geographic diversification: taking on projects outside the home country and building an international revenue base.
- Service diversification: combining planning, consulting, architecture, engineering, construction, and operations and maintenance.
- Capability diversification: using acquisitions or new delivery models to add expertise, including design-build and construction-management capacity.
- Relationship diversification: moving from a one-off assignment to a portfolio of services for a core client.
Why the 2000 building boom rewarded a wider portfolio
The market conditions in the article are historical. It describes a strong U.S. public-building cycle in 2000, particularly for education, health-care, and correctional facilities, alongside higher government and commercial construction investment in Europe. That combination created openings for firms able to work across sectors and borders.
A boom can expose the limits of a narrow business model. A contractor focused on one local building type may run out of suitable projects when that segment slows, while a firm with several sectors can move resources toward the strongest demand. Likewise, an engineering practice that offers only design may lose work when an owner wants a single team to coordinate design, construction, and facility operations.
The article does not establish that diversification always outperforms specialization. It presents a period when demand, public investment, and international opportunities made a broader platform attractive. The figures and conditions should therefore be read as a snapshot of 2000-era business, not as a current market forecast.
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Jacobs Engineering Group: the article’s central example
Acquisition added scale and capability
Jacobs had completed the first phase of acquiring the engineering and contracting business of Stork NV, a Dutch company, in 2000. In the article’s account, the transaction supported Jacobs’ international and service-expansion strategy. An acquisition can provide local relationships, technical staff, project history, and delivery capability more quickly than building those assets from scratch.
The article does not provide a current valuation, integration result, or later performance measure for the transaction. Its relevance is historical: the Stork deal illustrates acquisition as one route to diversification during the boom.
Billings rose faster than executives expected
Jacobs reported billings more than 30 percent higher than in 1999—twice the increase executives had expected. The figure is a company result reported in the 2010 article for the period around 2000; it is not an industry-wide benchmark and should not be treated as a present-day growth rate.
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More than 16 percent of Jacobs’ revenue came from international work in the period described. That percentage shows the scale of geographic diversification reported at the time, but the article does not say that the same mix exists today.
Growth markets were selected deliberately
Warren Dean, then Jacobs’ group vice president for facilities, described targeting growth markets such as educational and criminal-justice facilities. This was not diversification for its own sake. The approach linked a firm’s capabilities to building categories where public spending and project demand were expanding.
One relationship could become a service platform
Dean described an integrated offering that ran from planning and consulting through architecture, engineering, construction, and operations and maintenance. A client might first hire Jacobs for one assignment; the firm’s aim was to earn adjacent work by solving more of the owner’s problem.
This model changes the sales question from “How do we win the next project?” to “Which additional project functions can we perform well for an existing client?” It can increase the number of touchpoints with an owner and make the firm useful across a project’s life cycle, while also requiring broader staffing, quality controls, and coordination.
How the diversification model worked
- Identify a market with durable demand. Jacobs’ example focused on education and criminal-justice facilities, sectors the executive viewed as growth markets in the period.
- Match services to the owner’s complete need. The stated range—planning, consulting, architecture, engineering, construction, and operations and maintenance—covered decisions before construction, delivery, and facility use.
- Add missing capability. The Stork acquisition shows how a firm could obtain engineering and contracting capacity, local presence, or sector knowledge through a transaction.
- Extend the relationship. After an initial assignment, the firm could seek related services instead of waiting for an unrelated client or market.
- Balance the portfolio geographically. International work gave Jacobs another source of revenue; the article reports that it exceeded 16 percent of revenue in the period covered.
- Protect trust while expanding. A broader offering only works if the owner believes the firm can coordinate disciplines and deliver consistently.
The sequence is an interpretation of the strategy described in the article, not a claim that every firm should follow the same order or pursue every route.
Client concentration was treated as an advantage, not merely a risk
Dean said Jacobs derived “at least 75 to 80 percent” of its business from a few core clients and wanted to add “at least two to three core clients a year.” These are statements attributed to Dean in the 2010 article about the company’s 2000-era position and goals.
At first glance, relying on a few clients appears concentrated. In Jacobs’ approach, however, core-client depth was the foundation for diversification. A long-standing relationship made it easier to introduce another service, pursue a repeat program, or coordinate work across locations. The growth target was not simply more accounts; it was a larger set of durable relationships.
Dean also stressed that the connection was “not a corporate-to-corporate relationship so much as it is a people-to-people relationship.” That emphasis points to the practical side of business development in professional services: trust resides in project managers, engineers, architects, and owner representatives who have worked together, not only in a master agreement between legal entities.
For a firm applying this lesson, the useful distinction is between client count and relationship depth. Adding accounts without the staff, local knowledge, or service quality to support them can increase complexity without creating a dependable pipeline.
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The article also profiles URS, Day & Zimmermann, Lockwood Greene, Carter & Burgess, Burns & McDonnell, and other firms. It does not present a controlled ranking of them, nor does it show that one diversification route produced better returns than another. Instead, the profiles illustrate several ways building companies expanded during the same period.
Across those examples, the routes include international projects, focused positions in particular market sectors, acquisitions, broader design-build or construction-management capability, and combinations of design and construction services. Some firms appear to have built outward from a specialized base; others added geography or delivery capability. The common thread is alignment between what a firm could deliver and where owners were spending.
| Diversification route | Historical example in the article | What it changes | Evidence limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| International expansion | Jacobs reported more than 16% of revenue from international work in the period described. | Adds geographic demand and exposure to projects outside the domestic market. | The percentage is a 2000-era, article-reported figure, not a current measure. |
| Sector selection | Jacobs targeted educational and criminal-justice facilities; the article also describes firms with specialized portfolios. | Concentrates expertise where owners and public programs are active. | The article does not provide a comparable sector-by-sector performance table. |
| Service breadth | Jacobs described work spanning planning, consulting, architecture, engineering, construction, and operations and maintenance. | Lets one client buy several project stages from one provider. | The article does not quantify margin or win-rate effects. |
| Acquisition | Jacobs completed the first phase of acquiring Stork NV’s engineering and contracting business. | Adds people, capabilities, relationships, or geography faster than organic hiring alone. | No later integration or return figures are established in the article. |
| Delivery capability | Profiles mention expanded design-build and construction-management capability among firms. | Moves a firm closer to execution and coordination, not just design advice. | The profiles are descriptive examples, not a test of which model is superior. |
| Core-client development | Jacobs reported 75–80% of business from a few core clients and a goal of two to three additional core clients annually. | Turns repeat trust into opportunities for additional services. | These are historical statements attributed to one executive. |
A practical framework for firms evaluating diversification
The historical case can be converted into a disciplined decision process without assuming that every market is booming.
1. Map current dependence
List revenue by client, sector, geography, and service. Identify where a single owner, building type, or project stage accounts for an outsized share. Concentration is not automatically bad; it becomes a strategic issue when the firm has no credible alternative.
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2. Choose adjacent markets
Start with sectors where existing credentials, safety systems, codes knowledge, and client references transfer. Jacobs’ focus on education and criminal justice shows the logic of selecting growth markets that fit established capabilities rather than entering an unrelated field.
3. Define the service boundary
Decide whether the firm will remain a specialist, add construction management, partner for delivery, or build a life-cycle offering that reaches operations and maintenance. Broader scope increases coordination obligations, so each added service needs accountable leadership and quality controls.
4. Test build, buy, or partner options
An acquisition can add capability quickly, as the Stork transaction illustrates. Organic hiring may offer more control; a partnership can limit capital exposure. The historical article supplies the acquisition example but does not claim that buying is always the best answer.
5. Build people-to-people continuity
Assign senior contacts who understand the owner’s objectives and can connect specialists across disciplines. The relationship principle attributed to Dean is especially relevant when services multiply: trust must survive handoffs between planning, design, construction, and operations.
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Track backlog by sector and geography, repeat-client revenue, cross-service wins, utilization, cash conversion, and project quality. Growth in billings alone can conceal low margins, integration problems, or excessive dependence on one account.
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What the historical figures do—and do not—tell you
The article’s numbers are useful for understanding the scale of the strategy, but each requires a time label. “More than 30 percent” refers to Jacobs’ billings increase over 1999 in the 2000-era period described. “More than 16 percent” refers to international revenue in that same historical context. “At least 75 to 80 percent” and “two to three core clients a year” are statements of client mix and an executive goal reproduced in a 2010 retrospective.
None of these figures is a current company disclosure, a forecast for today’s construction market, or an industry-wide average. The article also does not establish causation: it shows diversification alongside strong results, but it does not prove that diversification alone produced them. Market timing, public investment, project execution, acquisitions, and existing relationships may all have contributed.
Why the article still matters to construction readers
The enduring lesson is not that every firm should become a one-stop shop or expand overseas. It is that growth choices should reinforce one another. A sector focus can guide where to sell; an integrated service range can increase value to that sector; an acquisition can supply missing skills; and trusted client relationships can create repeat opportunities.
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Read in its proper context, the August 11, 2010 Building Design + Construction article is a historical account of how firms responded to the 2000 building boom. Its Jacobs example records international expansion, an acquisition, rapid billings growth, targeted sectors, integrated services, and a core-client strategy. Together with the other firm profiles, it shows the range of paths available to architecture, engineering, and construction businesses seeking a broader and more resilient platform.
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