Jacobs.com
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.
Jacobs Engineering Group is one of the world’s largest providers of technical services with an annual income of over 8 billion dollars. The company offers scientific and specialty consulting to industrial, commercial and government clients in over 20 countries. Headquartered in Pasadena, California Jacobs Company operates in North America, UK, Europe, Australia and Asia. This impressive expansion has ultimately led the company in the elite club of the Fortune 500 list.
Website
Jacobs.com strikes the reader with its rather old school presentation style. As opposed to modern websites, which usually boast at least some basin information on their front page, Jacobs.com is content to only show the links to its various sections. While this approach might seem pragmatic and even efficient for directing the visitors which want to read a specific section, it make the website unappealing for first time readers. The reason behind this approach is however pretty well built, as the company usually relies on repeat customers (accounting for roughly 90% of its business) and thus the need for “glitzy graphics” and hyped up sales copy is greatly reduced.
Despite this perceived attractiveness, the website does accomplish honorably the tasks given to it. All the sections typical to a corporate website can be easily found and the navigation is not strictly hierarchical and vertical, but also allows hopping between various sections without the need of accessing the front page.
History
Company’s roots go back in 1947 when Joseph J Jacobs founded Jacobs Engineering Co. and nine years later completed its first large project: engineering of a caustic chlorine plant for Kaiser Aluminum, Louisiana.
In 1960, as a result of gaining a design-construct project the company’s staff expanded from 20 to 150 people. The years to come had been prolific; Jacobs Company expanded its geographic coverage and number of employees and in 1974 started its most important chemical project to that date: the E&C management of a pharmaceutical plant for Syntex in Ireland.
The company’s portfolio has expanded greatly over time and now includes among others a program for the federal government to remediate 24 low-level sites in 10 states and a project of engineering and design for Genetech’s Vacaville, California. In 1994 Jacobs Group entered into a Global Alliance Agreement with Kelogg Company in order to provide engineering and construction management services for a large variety of capital projects.
In 2003 Jacobs was named the Most Admired E&C Company by the Fortune Magazine. The policy that made such a thing possible can be directly related in the company’s effort of landing long term projects alone, which is the reason for the unusually high 90% repeat customers figure, translatable to a image of a company which makes solid commitments, but also to the image of a company which prefers small steps rather than dynamic growth.
Impact
The Engineering and Construction industries, in which Jacobs activates is mostly dedicated to corporate clients. This fact means that there is no advertising aimed at the general public and thus Jacobs is a widely unknown in the collective mind. This situation changes drastically though once you move up in the industry circles and the Wall Street, where the company is extremely respected, although seen a little bit as conservative in its approach.
Languages
English
Additional Information
Related Domains
External Links
- Stock: JEC
- Alexa: Jacobs.com
