Engineering consultant says 'further downturn' in order book will force it to reduce workforce by 13% in UK and Europe

Engineering giant Aecom is gearing up to make 350 redundancies in the UK and Europe as consultants continue to battle the recession.

The firm鈥檚 UK and Europe chief executive, Ken Dalton, has written to staff saying headcount will have to be reduced by almost 13% due to a 鈥渇urther downturn in our order book鈥� in the last four months.

The cuts come on top of a 4% reduction in staff numbers earlier this year.

Dalton said: 鈥淒uring the early parts of the summer we were hopeful that the actions we had taken during the course of the year were sufficient to sustain the level of business that was being won by the company.

鈥淗owever, during the last four months we have seen a further downturn in our order book and the outlook across many of our sectors is not predicted to recover for some time.鈥�

A redundancy consultation with affected staff will be launched before Christmas.

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