Foreign billings shake up giants

As the 21^st century gathered steam, the editors of Building Design & Construction decided it was time to reflect the increasingly global nature of building design, construction and ownership.and for the first time consider billings from international work in the statistics. That — and a good year — increased the volume of billings in the year 2000 for commercial, institutional and industrial (CII) building work by more than 25 percent from 1999, according to the results of the 2001 Design/Construct 300 survey of the giants in the industry.

By including foreign billings in this year's survey, a number of firms heavy in international work have leaped ahead in the rankings. Especially benefiting were architectural firms. Fifty-six percent of the top 50 architectural firms said they performed some international work during 2000, with growth in Europe cited. Seventy-two percent of the top 50 engineer/architects reported foreign work, as did about half of the engineering and general contracting firms.

As a result of including foreign billings and construction put-in-place abroad in this year's ranking, architecture firms and construction managers may appear much bigger. Architectural firms now report total billings that are 30.5 percent higher than they were in 1999; CMs show 28.1 percent higher billings. General contractors are also busy overseas, so their CII construction values jumped by more than a quarter.

The fundamentals, however, are still the same, and the ranking reflects what was a good year overall for U.S.-based design and construction firms. Isolated softening in certain segments — design/build and reconstruction, for example — was more than made up for by a vibrant market for new construction.

Contractors with top volumes from design/build (millions of dollars)