To meet our clients' needs, we continue to make strategic acquisitions that provide unique strengths and broaden our geographic and service offerings.
Since 2014, ERM has completed 15 acquisitions, bringing in the expertise of close to 800 people to complement our core client offerings and to expand our capability in areas that build our skills or service offerings that we can provide clients across our geographies. Our FY20 acquisitions continue to help us respond to the changing needs of our clients.
CSA Global's deep understanding of what it takes to set up and efficiently operate mines in diverse geographies around the world complements ERM’s ability to identify and mitigate the non-technical environmental, health and safety and sustainability risks facing the mining sector. As environmental and social issues increasingly have a bearing on the exploration, permitting, operation and closure of a mine, combining ERM’s capabilities in this area with CSA Global’s technical and operational focus will provide full service support to clients to help manage the risks across the life of mine. These combined capabilities help us support clients across all phases of the mining cycle.
The acquisition of Contek Solutions enhances our ability to serve oil and gas upstream and midstream markets in Western Texas (Permian Basin), Oklahoma and the Gulf of Mexico. These are all areas where our clients are asking for an enhanced ERM presence so that our service offering covers their full operational footprint in North America. Contek is a valuable addition to ERM’s existing safety services and presence in North America. It also provides additional capability in air quality services and greenhouse gas assessment, demand for which is increasing as a function of the focus on climate change.
Fifth Business's core focus is in the implementation of change programs and the resultant communications and training that follows from this. There are a host of triggers for change events and therefore change management. The acquisition of Fifth represents a material addition to our change management and stakeholder engagement capabilities to ensure the adoption of technical solutions while meeting the growing demand for change management in our digital transformation projects.
The value at stake for businesses in the mining and energy sectors due to sustainability and sociopolitical challenges is increasing. Having a methodology to help assess these challenges and stakeholder concerns and outline the steps necessary to address them positions ERM, though the acquisition of Critical Resource, to support our key clients both at a strategic level and also with the more technical assessments that are often identified.
Critical Resource’s LicenseSecure™ methodology provides a structured and robust way of assessing an asset’s license to operate. Due to client demand, they have also developed a tool on the same platform to assess and benchmark climate change risks and responses called ClimateSecure. Both these assessment tools and reporting outputs can be used by companies as well as financial investors as they plan their responses to the risks they face.
The acquisition of MJB&A provides a critical mass to ERM’s climate change and low carbon economy transition offering to clients in North America. This increasing need is in response to the key market drivers of investor pressure on risk and opportunities associated with climate change, evolving state and federal regulations, technology advancements revolutionizing power generation, transportation and energy use. MJB&A’s activities are complementary to ERM's climate change services by adding policy analysis, market assessment, benchmarking air emissions and data analysis/visualization. Their strategic advisory services supplement ERM’s more technical and operational climate change/air quality services. MJB&A also developed a series of client coalitions to bring together companies and other stakeholders with common interests in order to advance mutually beneficial goals regarding climate change.