From left to right: Thomas B. Olsen, Susanne Kynne Frandsen, Christoffer Trulsen, Ann-Sofie Østberg Bjergby (CFO as per 1 March 2025), Markus Davelid, Carsten Toft Boesen, Mads Søndergaard, Theis Tarp Rasmussen, Pernille Blach Hansen, Jens Brandt Bering, Petra Bjurhall (resigned 31 January 2025).
2024 has been a year of growth, further internationalisation and increased investments in business development. With the launch of our strategy towards 2030, we have set a clear direction to address global challenges, seize new market opportunities and simultaneously nurture and adapt our culture and identity.
Important strategic acquisitions, including Lorien Engineering Solutions, FDT Consulting Engineers and Syspons, have significantly added expertise and capacity within Life Science, Food & Beverage and Monitoring & Evaluation. At the same time, these acquisitions have enhanced our footprint in the UK, Poland, Ireland and Germany. Integration is progressing as planned, with results so far meeting expectations. Recently awarded contracts reflect clients’ continued trust during the transition of ownership.
While the global business environment remained highly volatile – marked by geopolitical tensions, intensified systemic rivalry and hesitation in many markets – we have demonstrated agility, successfully navigated challenges and delivered advice and engineering solutions to our clients.
Increased competition and hesitation in certain markets and sectors have put more pressure on growth and productivity targets. Accordingly, greater focus has been placed on securing the pipeline and boosting order intake. Entering 2025, we hold a strong and satisfying order backlog across sectors – a testament to the resilience of our clients and the trust they place in our teams.
Against this background, it is very positive that we have managed to grow significantly across service lines and markets. Despite continued very strong financial performance, in Norway and within the Building sector, overall profitability was reduced compared to last year.
Overall, we remain confident that we are on track to deliver on our 2026 objectives related to people, clients, society and owners.
We have maintained our commitment to excellence in project delivery and the engineering of sustainable solutions. We remain committed to learning not least from our most complex projects and honestly share learnings and insights with clients and colleagues. This is not always easy, but continuous improvement is essential. Project delivery is our business, and excellence is our objective.
The following pages include selected client projects that illustrate our commitment to engineering a sustainable, resilient future – one project at a time. Projects that also reflect our ability to address complexity, combine expertise across and knowledge from our partners to deliver lasting value.
We continue to invest in the green energy transition. Our investments, mainly directed toward expertise, capacity and market development are starting to pay off and we are now ahead of revenue targets in key areas such as fuel and wind energy - this has been achieved despite slower-than-expected public investments in green initiatives.
Regarding digitalisation, we further extended our services as well as build capacity and capabilities. In the years to come, focus will be on two main objectives. Firstly, we aim to drive AI-supported individual quality and effectiveness and secondly, to develop and implement productivity and ecxellence enhancing use cases across business lines. AI drives productivity and not least better services and deeper insights.
People are the backbone of our achievements. Fortunate with a strong, collaborative and supportive culture, we have maintained high employee satisfaction and retention rates, proofing NIRAS a place where people grow and talent thrives.
Daniel Pink’s masterpiece, "Drive", identifies purpose, mastery and autonomy as key drivers of job satisfaction and performance. Contributing to the major elements of the sustainability agenda in a project-based environment with great clients and colleagues provides both purpose and ample opportunities to pursue and achieve mastery.
We strongly believe that our flat structure, trust-based system and autonomous culture deliver both agility and responsiveness allowing teams to make timely decisions close to projects and markets.
Looking ahead, we see very significant societal challenges related to climate change and geopolitics; challenges that are gloomy, but also challenges that will drive major transitions and related demand for engineering solutions across industries. Five societal demands are expected to drive growth:
Sustainability: Industries across sectors are sincerely committed to deliver on their sustainability targets and we have the expertise, references and partnerships to deliver cross-effective and tangible solutions.
Defense: Investment plans including infrastructure to cope with the geopolitical situation are peaking and we have the knowhow and important framework agreements.
Green energy transition: We have built capacity expertise and experience to meet the growing demands related to renewable energy production and storage and to electrification of industries and society.
Climate change adaptation: Frequent cloudbursts, flooding and rising groundwater levels drive investments in some of our key expertise areas.
Finally, the implementation of the historic Danish green tripartite agreement, will significantly increase the demand for our services.
As we move into 2025, we want to acknowledge the efforts and dedication of our teams and the trust and engagement of our clients and partners. Together, we have overcome challenges and delivered impactful solutions. While the world continues to grow in complexity, we remain committed to providing more sustainable and effective solutions for clients and communities.
With a strong foundation, a clear strategy and the collective expertise of our people, we are confident that NIRAS is well-positioned to contribute strongly the transitions that lie ahead. We look forward to the work and to the opportunities we will explore together.
On behalf of the NIRAS leadership team
Carsten Toft Boesen
CEO, NIRAS
