The UK arm of a global engineering and consulting group that grew from the Williams Sale Partnership, founded in Surrey in 1969, and absorbed Parsons Brinckerhoff and Mouchel in the UK.
WSP in the UK is an engineering and professional services consultancy. In 2017 it organised its UK work into four businesses: transport and infrastructure, planning and advisory, property and buildings, and energy and industry. Wikipedia lists UK projects such as 22 Bishopsgate in London and Old Oak Common railway station. The firm designs and advises on the roads, railways, buildings, power and water systems that people rely on.
WSP began in England as the Williams Sale Partnership, a building services consultancy in Surrey set up in 1969, and Wikipedia names Chris Cole, Geoffrey Williams, John Sale and Geoffrey Middleton as its founders. It joined the London Stock Exchange in 1987 with 80 staff and by 1999 had about 2,000. A Canadian firm took it over in 2012 and adopted the WSP brand in 2014. In 2014 it bought Parsons Brinckerhoff and in 2016 it bought the consultancy Mouchel in the UK. In 2017 the UK business dropped the Parsons Brinckerhoff name and launched a new brand. The Canadian parent is now the owner of the group, but the UK business still carries the name of the Surrey partnership that started it. We did not read a mission statement for the UK arm, so we have not made one up.
A 2017 report said WSP had over 7,000 people in the UK, and its UK chief executive then was Mark Naysmith. That figure is dated and may have changed. The pages we read did not give the UK office list, though a trade report mentioned a joint office for WSP and Parsons Brinckerhoff in Bristol, and the Mouchel network was folded into the WSP name in July 2017. We could not confirm the current UK footprint.
For culture, we found little current first-party material. The 2017 article quoted the UK chief executive calling the rebrand "a historic moment in the history of our company", and it described the merger of WSP, Parsons Brinckerhoff and Mouchel staff under one structure. We therefore do not describe working life here beyond the fact that it is a large, multi-business UK consultancy, and recommend checking the firm's UK website.
Jobs in a business like this include transport and civil engineers, building services engineers, planners, environmental specialists, energy consultants and project managers, along with support teams. It suits people who like to see large public works take shape, from stations to towers to power networks. The firm's origins in building services engineering, the heating, lighting and ventilation of buildings, also mean that specialist building engineers have long been part of its UK story, alongside the transport and planning teams added through later mergers.
Website: www.wsp.com
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