Sweco
Leading civil engineering and architecture consultancy
1300 UK employees
Circa £108m UK turnover
26 offices across the country
Sweco plans and designs tomorrow’s communities and cities.
Their work produces sustainable buildings, efficient infrastructure and access to electricity and clean water. With 1300 employees in the UK, Sweco has a UK turnover of circa £108m across 26 offices. As Europe’s leading engineering and architecture consultancy, they carry out projects in 70 countries annually throughout the world and in 2018, Sweco UK was ranked as the 6th top civil engineering consultancy by the NCE.
The Project
As a leading advisor in innovation incentives, Ayming prides itself on the experience and quality of its consulting teams. Our consultants come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds including technical positions covering all science and technology sectors and top tier global accountancy firms. This allows us to deploy specialised engagement teams to match the specific requirements of each client, ensuring an efficient claim process and that the claim value is maximised through robust understanding of the technical aspects of the work undertaken in businesses.
We really enjoy working with Ayming. Their consultants are extremely competent and it’s clear that they’re able to communicate with the technical staff here at Sweco as peers.Philip Bruce, Finance Director, Sweco
The Ayming team working with Sweco had a strong professional background in design consultancy and experience on working in claims in that sector, including mechanical, structural and chemical engineers working alongside tax-qualified consultants.
Working closely with Sweco, this team developed a comprehensive R&D claim strategy that would achieve thorough and well targeted coverage of Sweco’s innovative projects. The strategy ensured we were engaging the most relevant technical leads, helping to maximise the reach and value of the R&D project identification.
The Innovation
One of the standout projects in our engagement with Sweco was their award winning Bloomberg project, with innovative vacuum drainage, water recycling and new ceiling products developed to deliver the ‘Outstanding’ rating against the BREEAM sustainability assessment method, with a 98.5% score – the highest ever achieved by an office building. Our consultants involved used their technical backgrounds to ensure that all qualifying aspects of the development were covered in the claim, to ensure that they received the full benefit that this iconic project deserved.
For every engagement, Ayming conducts interviews with technical staff and key stakeholders to gain a deep understanding of the client’s projects and identify qualifying R&D projects. Achieving a strong mutual technical understanding is key to making these assessments and ensuring that all eligible activities contributing towards the R&D project are captured in the claim for the correct time duration.
In the Sweco project interviews, Ayming’s consultants were able to leverage their strong technical backgrounds and communicate with Sweco’s technical specialists on a peer-to-peer basis. This meant that they were able to accurately assess Sweco’s projects and provide a comprehensive justification of the eligible R&D projects they identified, ranging from work undertaken on Wastewater Treatment on the Loughor Estuary to the landmark Bloomberg Headquarters in central London.
The review process was efficient, with the technical team able to assess complicated engineering projects using their previous sector experience.
The Results
A substantial amount of qualifying expenditure was identified in Sweco’s claim over the course of a two year period, which in turn delivered a generous benefit back to Sweco. The Ayming team were able to cover an average of 75 of projects per claim year across Sweco’s five main divisions, representing thorough coverage of the businesses projects.
