CallisonRTKL reviews

Arcadis owns RTKL and with the latest merger with Callison, they've brought in a heavier hand on operations. Slowly but surely, CallisonRTKL is losing their autonomy as a design firm and will be fully consumed into the mega-corporation of Arcadis. Arcadis only cares about profit and ignores the triple bottom line. Leadership is often uninspiring and middle management is light and burned out from lack of support. Most clients are not really interested in quality buildings, mainly just cheap and fast which has lead to many problems in construction and beyond. Production work is currently being forced overseas by Arcadis to save money, but it causes new communication stresses on the current workforce and if successful, threatens the traditional legacy of learning technical architecture through drafting and face-to-face mentoring experience and construction administration. If you are a designer who thinks they can change the world here, you might have some small victories, but 'safe' design is the typical mode. Innovation is not really possible in the current bureaucratic work environment where adversity to overhead starves growth and freedom for employees.

Top down politics spoil the water. Favoritism and lack of communication for fear of backlash leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Uncertainty and lack of support from middle and upper management drives many to believe that this is not a long term spot. Great for launching your career but not for sticking around. Merger has ruined benefits, morale and everyone at the lower rungs is woefully underpaid. They cut corners and will throw you down the river to serve corporate goals or their bossy big name clients. Get ready to burn out.