Arup
Work wellbeing score is 69 out of 100
4.0 out of 5 stars.
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Arup Employee Reviews

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United Kingdom66 reviews

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3.8Work-life balance
3.7Pay & benefits
3.7Job security & advancement
3.6Management
3.9Culture

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Great workplace

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Workplace is great with supportive colleagues. There is pressure to win and deliver jobs. But generally not overly high. Some clique issues initially which are not surprising.
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Great values, poor leadership and low salaries

Arup's culture and values are very inspiring. However, the leadership team on a group level are distant, unwilling to implement change and have their favorites. Arup is not the place to progress quickly - if you are a high achiever you are encouraged to leave and rejoin at a higher grade. Salaries very low compared to the market.
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Insights into Arup

Based on 11 survey responses
What people like
  • Ability to learn new things
  • Time and location flexibility
  • Fair pay for job
Areas for improvement
  • Sense of belonging
  • Overall satisfaction

Stay away if you are a technically minded person

Long hours and below market salary, no promotion if you don't fit Arup hipster profile. Most of the non-EU workforce that are on Tier 2 sponsorship have to work twice as hard. Overall, not a nice company for immigrant engineers despite all that diversity and inclusion propaganda they push in their PR.

Pros

High profile projects

Cons

Long hours, low salary, no promotion
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Interesting projects

Interesting projects - bright colleagues and innovative research. Not the best paid but decent work environment. Can be pressure to work long hours and on billability.
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A cult

The dead leaders name is still on the businessThis percolates through everythingThey're all busy little worker bees, no one seemed to care or know about investingThere were a number of frustrated unmarried women there making things hard for everyone

Pros

Lovely coffee machine

Cons

Angry people
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Extremely poor work/life balance imposed on staff

Traditional 9-5:30 working does not apply. It’s more 10-7:30 on a good day. I was suddenly expected to work overseas every second week, and they enforced that I travel on Sunday midday because of flight times at no extra pay, just once I got a half day in lieu. None of this was mentioned in interview. Manager was unprofessional and unliked by the whole team because of these pressures on people. It’s pot luck with the teams/management you end up with and experiences will vary. Positive note the office itself is great.
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Great place to work

A real focus on producing quality work. Great management, great team. Sometimes changes can take a while to come into effect but it's a big company so that's expected.

Cons

Sometimes stressful around deadlines
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Fun workplace

good company with good benefits, low staff turnover, offer all sorts of opportunities to learn and progress no matter what stage you are at in your career.
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If you don’t fit their stereotype, you’re driven out

Vile and toxic culture and management. If you don’t fit their mould, you are driven out. My personal experience saw myself and a couple of colleagues pushed to a point where constructive dismissal took place. No effort was made to encourage career progression (if you a person who doesn’t fit their Arupian stereotype) and in fact, measures were put in place to obstruct it. You are told your work isn’t good enough, yet not given the support to perform your role or improve. You’re gaslighted and made to think you aren’t good enough for the job. Many cliques are in place too. Joining Arup was a very intimidating experience. It reminds me of a club you have to initiate yourself into to reap the full benefits.

Pros

Two bonus payments a year

Cons

Poor pay
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Good company to start a career in

good company with good benefits, low staff turnover, offer all sorts of opportunities to learn and progress no matter what stage you are at in your career.
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Jobs at Arup

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Productive and Encouraging

The workplace is very encouraging and motivating. Everyone is helpful whenever a problem arises and always happy to provide more information about software shortcuts or information regarding the industry

Pros

Flexible Hours

Cons

Nothing
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Arup is a good company to work for.

Arup is a good company to work for. It can feel a bit like a cult in the way people view the company but everyone is very nice. Very focused on sustainability and innovation. It can be slow paced and sometimes you may feel like progression is not really easy.

Pros

Great food and snack bar. Office is really nice.

Cons

Can be long hours, and you may feel like you arr not developing much
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Great place to work for engineers

Good salary relative to industry average. Flexible working included. Better work life Banavie than some of the other big consultancies. The career progression can be slow bur compensates with other benefits mentioned.
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Depends on your team

Like any large firm, your team and cost centre make a big difference in your experience. I think my team is pretty great. I feel that some higher management can be top heavy and not enabling of one's best work.
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Great place to work

I had a great experience working with Arup. Work ethics, culture at the top level. Was involved in projects with many different offices (London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Madrid, Warsaw, Amsterdam, Dublin, Moscow, Hong Kong etc.) - people are very friendly and helpful everywhere.

Pros

Great company culture, great people, profit share, opportunities to grow

Cons

it is an engineering consultancy, depends a lot on the economy cycles
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No equal opportunities

Arup has a long history in engineering and design. You can find a great resources and internal forums for training and learning.No equal opportunities for all and less diverse comparing to other international companies in the UK.Low salary and stressful workplace. inexperienced PMs in some areas.Financial issues of projects.

Pros

Good resources to learn

Cons

No equal opportunities for all, low salary, stressful
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Best company i have ever worked for!

An honest company that has great values. You can progress at your own pace in any direction. I started out fixing kit and ended up working on huge projects and help combine teams together. Acoustics and ecology now work closely together. I really enjoyed my time there and am very sad to leave.

Pros

great staff, great wages and great work.

Cons

Never enough hours in the day.
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Old boys club

Arup trades on its reputation not on how creative its designers and consultants are. They talk the talk but don’t walk it as being predominantly a white Middle aged male management team, as previous reviewer states unless you are an engineer you have no value as part of the project delivery team. Engineers have very little site experience if any . Therefor struggle with construction concepts. conceptschallenges

Pros

Good cafe, nice people

Cons

Poor safety culture, Hr
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Relaxed culture.

Pleasant people to work with, and stress free environment (large business park). Good training opportunities to progress further within.Excellent communication cascaded to all staff regarding upcoming events.

Pros

Great surroundings

Cons

Difficult to travel to
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Illusions of Grandeur

Arup is a nice place to work with nice people, but they are resting on their laurels. They have a great reputation in the industry as one of the top consultancies in the world, but in my experience they rely on this to win work, rather than letting consistency and quality of work doing the talking. If they do not move with the times and embrace change, the cracks will show more, and they will fall behind in the Industry. When I worked there everything was reactionary and last minute. They did not learn from their mistakes. Although the directors recognised the issues, they were not prepared to take the steps to improve this. People were expected to work late to make up for this, rather than update working behaviour and culture. Generally people are nice, but the professionalism I witnessed was outdated and tired. The directors said they had to improve quality and consistency, but I found this just be lip service, and when it came to it they were not prepared to do anything. Engineering knowledge and skill is obviously the core of an engineering business, but at times non-engineering staff were treated as lower class citizens. Although they were allowed to have a voice, this was often ignored or not taken seriously which made a mockery some non engineering staff. I have witnessed this often as an unfortunate culture of the construction industry, but I thought Arup would be better than this and see the value in all staff. Disappointingly, they are no different to other outdated companies who talk the talk, but when it comes to it, there is not a lot of substance - 

Pros

Nice People and culture

Cons

Everything last minute, not prepared to learn from mistakes
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Innovative

So many great minds, you really get to learn so much from all of the great minds within the firm. As an employee owned company the business invests a lot into Research and Development.

Pros

Excellent knowledge sharing.

Cons

Can get competative.
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Overall rating

Based on 254 reviews

Ratings by category

3.8 out of 5 stars for Work/Life Balance
3.7 out of 5 stars for Salary/Benefits
3.7 out of 5 stars for Job security/advancement
3.6 out of 5 stars for Management
3.9 out of 5 stars for Culture

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