CH2M Hill: A Private Firm in a Public World

CH2M Hill was an employee-owned and controlled professional engineering services firm providing engineering, construction, consulting, design and design-build, procurement, engineering-procurement-construction (EPC), operations and maintenance, program management and technical services to customers all over the world. A large portion of the company’s project business was funded by governments. With $5.9 billion in sales in 2015 and 25,000 employees worldwide, the company was a global player. But in 2014 CH2M Hill posted record losses. A multitude of project and contract cost overruns around the world had resulted in losses that threatened the firm’s very survival. A private capital equity injection had provided critical refinancing – but at the loss of pure employee ownership and control. Now in 2016, after returning to profitability, many of the firm’s core owners, its employees, questioned whether the firm’s unique employee ownership structure would survive.