Knights Brown has been ranked 50 in NCE’s List of Top 100 Civil Engineering Firms making us one of the highest moving companies up 36 places from our ranking of 86th last year.

The NCE100 is a totally independent, authoritative assessment of what it means to be an excellent civil engineering practice. Analysis of a comprehensive company questionnaire is combined with the scoring of a panel of judges who have scrutinised written submissions and then interviewed business leaders from the highest performing companies. This information is then combined with the views of staff themselves, which are obtained from a confidential survey of almost 6,500 engineers working for NCE100 companies.

The assessment is made against New Civil Engineer’s five core pillars; the competencies and passions sought in outstanding firms: technical excellence; technology leadership; talent development; action on equality and global leadership. Sitting on top of that is an assessment of a key behaviour sought in civil engineering today: collaboration.

Competition to enter the NCE100 was fierce this year, with 26 new entries resulting in several firms failing to make the 100 at all.

The biggest mover was Bouygues, up 60 places to 10 with others including Mouchel (now part of WSP), up 46 to 23, Interserve, up 49 to 28, Hydrock, up 48 to 33, RSK up 49 to 35 and Sweco, up 50 to 46.

The NCE100 rankings were unveiled at a gala dinner in London on 22 June.