The value enhancement plan will be based on several axes:
Achieving stakeholder goals: according to (KPMG, 2019), pursuing all stakeholder goals can hurt corporate value creation. For example, in AECOM, more than 87% of the company's investors are institutional investors. They are looking for ambitious plans to achieve long-term goals and create value for the company in the long term; this contrasts with the 13% of shareholders who seek greater profitability and returns on shares, they usually don't care about the company's mechanism of action and its ambitious goals more than the quick results they expect. to overcome this, long-term and short-term plans must be balanced, as discussed previously.
Sustainable development: the occasional emphasis is placed on the social involvement and philanthropy of AECOM's decision-makers; according to (Kaczmarek, 2019), Corporate social responsibility does not necessarily aim to spend money for good just to highlight the company's role in that; instead, the company should focus on creating shared value between its services and these businesses, so the main goal is to create a work vision that is built based on social responsibility and the role of the company with its surrounding environment, this is what makes social responsibility a solid foundation in the company's business and makes it an acquired value.
Competitive advantage: it is difficult to find a competitive advantage in the engineering office work environment; companies that provide engineering services by seconding their employees to other institutions, whether governmental or private, the employees of these engineering offices work according to the regulations and laws of these institutions and not according to the vision of the parent institution which is AECOM (Mbaskool, 2020), it can be said that AECOM has some advantages that make it differently such as full supervision of its operations by its central management and its investment in human resources such as the salaries are somewhat higher than its competitors and the allowance packages that are approved for its employees, however, due to the presence of companies that provide the same services at a lower cost, it is difficult to achieve a competitive advantage in this market.
Opportunities
Evaluating Financial Strategies: AECOM has a strong board of directors that implements good governance for the company's operations; the company won the Best Corporate Governance award for 2013 by Corporate Secretary Magazine (Dickard, 2013), the company's share in the financial markets is in good condition and is on the rise during this fiscal year, it is due to the continuous evaluation of its operations and the enhancement of the market value of the company as a whole.
Risk Management: AECOM has weathered financial crises and recessions during its career by implementing various risk management plans. According to GS Analytics (2022), the company was able to pass the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic by investing in infrastructure services at the international level, which cannot be stopped because of the periodic maintenance of roads, bridges, and other facilities.
Conclusion
In this paper, both the challenges and opportunities that result from the strategies mentioned in the previous discussion are discussed; the most important of these challenges is achieving the stakeholders' goals despite the different visions and goals and also attaining sustainable development while maintaining the rationalization of spending in this direct competitive advantage despite the presence of competitors who offer lower prices, as for the available opportunities such as evaluating financial strategies which the company seeks to accomplish with good governance, finally, the application of risk management in light of recessions and economic crises.
References
Burtonshaw-Gunn, S. A. (2017). Risk and financial management in construction. Routledge.
Dickard, P. (2013). AECOM wins corporate governance award from Corporate Secretary magazine
https://investors.aecom.com/static-files/116e8e65-1d0e-4a5b-8fe0-1e6e484c4808
GS Analytics. (2022). AECOM: A Defensive Bet For Upcoming Recession
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4534502-aecoms-a-defensive-bet-for-upcoming-recession
Kaczmarek, J. (2019). The Mechanisms of Creating Value vs. Financial Security of Going Concern—Sustainable
Management. Sustainability 11, p. 1 -24). Retrieved from https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/8/2278/pdf
KPMG (2019). Winning Strategies for the Long Term. Retrieved from
https://assets.kpmg/content/dam/kpmg/xx/pdf/2019/05/winning-strategies-for-the-long-term.pdf
Mbaskool.(2020). Aecom Technology SWOT Analysis, Competitors & USP
https://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/real-estate-and-construction/8223-aecom-technology.html