Keep reading about the biggest civil engineering companies in Europe. Sounds interesting, right? But what is civil engineering? It is a very interesting topic and now Insider Monkey has published an article about it. So what is it? It is a professional engineering discipline that works with construction, design, and maintenance of built environment, such as bridges, roads, building, canals and many more.
The word ‘civil’ is there to distinguish the engineering from ‘military engineering’, which is a practice of building and designing military associated buildings, lines of transport or communication. So, basically, civil engineering is the second oldest discipline in this branch. Moreover, even though it seems as just building and constructing, there is a whole science behind it. To start engineering, it is necessary to know a lot about mathematics, history, and physics. In addition, recognizing materials, having knowledge of geography, geology, environmental studies, hydrology, etc., are essential. It is one of the professions with the widest range of possibilities, and hence, in the same time very demanding. Therefore, there are fourteen sub-disciplines of civil engineering. Depending on the area of work, there are different types. So, not to bother you with all of them, we would just mention few important ones such as: Coastal, Environmental, Geotechnical, Forensic and Earthquake Engineering.
Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked three companies from their list. The first one is Laing O’Rourke/UK. Sale per year: $2.4 bn = €2.1 bn. It was founded in 1978 by Ray O’Rourke, its main chairman. This private civil engineering company has headquarters in Dartford, a city in the United Kingdom, but it has spread also with its operations in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Australia. The second company is Hochtief/Germany. Sale per year: $19.9 bn = €17.7 bn. This German construction company is one of the best in this country. It was founded in 1874 in Essen, a little city in Germany where you can still find its headquarters. Chief executive and chairman is Marciano Fernandez. It operates globally, in the USA, as well as in Australia through a 53.43% shareholding in CIMIC Group. Currently, it has 51, 490 employees. NCC/Sweden is the last company for now. Sale per year: $7.5 bn = €6.7 bn. In the Northern part of Europe, NCC is the second leading construction and property development company. It has around 16,500 employees and 4% of market share! Moreover, their field of work is very wide. They build residential and commercial properties, constructing industrial facilities and public buildings, roads and civil engineering structures. The company was founded in 1890 when a Swedish businessman Axel Johnson established it firstly under the name ‘North Star’, which later became NCC.
For any further interesting information read Insider Monkey’s article about 12 biggest civil engineering companies in Europe
