Balfour Beatty on track with acquisition of York engineering firm
INFRASTRUCTURE giant Balfour Beatty has acquired York-headquartered Omnicom Engineering in a deal which it says will boost its position in the UK rail market.
Founded in 1995, Omnicom Engineering specialises in the development of vehicle borne software and hardware platforms for asset survey, inspection and monitoring for use across the transportation sector.
The company, which also has an office in Derby, has a client base which includes Network Rail in the UK and Australia’s largest rail freight operator Aurizon.
Balfour Beatty said the investment in its UK rail business will offer clients “unrivalled expertise across the rail infrastructure lifecycle”, from feasibility studies and planning through to design and implementation, maintenance and asset management.
Mark Bullock, managing director of Balfour Beatty’s UK Rail business, said: “Omnicom Engineering is a true innovator which is benefiting from over 20 years of investment in research and development. We will leverage this expertise alongside the high speed laser measurement technology that already exists within Balfour Beatty, to provide unrivalled technical solutions to clients in the growing high-speed and unattended data collection market in which we see opportunities for increasing our business.
“Together, Omnicom and Balfour Beatty’s range of asset management solutions will offer an unrivalled richness of information to support the maintenance of roads and railways across the world.”
Omnicom Engineering specialises in video and laser surveys, in addition to high-speed video inspection, such as OmniVision which enables clients to replace manual track inspection with automated machine vision from a high speed vehicle.
