Pros
The organisation has a good reputation and brand value and adds weight to the CV of a young professional starting out on a career in consultancy. Support for gaining professional chartership and accreditation is very good. Access to a variety and range of projects in UK, Middle East and elsewhere is something that again adds value to one’s CV.
Cons
There are some brilliant people working under very mediocre management practices. Overall, the organisation lacks a coherent vision and strategy. Senior management have no visibility on clients, sectors or even what is keeping the staff busy. Too much emphasis on billable time (‘productivity’) means staff are motivated to keep themselves billable without much thought on future business direction. Business development is often ignored and is seen as a ‘necessary evil’. As a result, Atkins usually ends up with contracts that competitors don’t want. Approach to project management is that PM time is seen as an unnecessary overhead and therefore, tech staff are asked to juggle PMing with technical delivery. It might work on small jobs but on large projects, it usually leads to project failures and losses. Ad hoc management is very much in vogue and perhaps only the fire department can teach you better fire-fighting skills. Staff reward and recognition is non-existent. Salary reviews are pretty much opaque and grade promotions are inconsistent with any logic or reason. There is a lot of unwritten rules around chartership/professional accreditation and they are seldom consistent. Salaries are sub-par with industry standards and only way to secure a substantial salary hike is to get another job offer from a competitor and hope for a counter-offer, at which point, you might as well decide to leave.