AECOM/IBM outsourcing deal has soured further, claims insider

Inside source claims that AECOM's IT is struggling as a result of January 2017 IBM outsourcing deal

The $2.3bn IT outsourcing deal AECOM signed with IBM in January 2017 is still fraught with significant problems, according to an inside source who wishes to remain anonymous.

The source claims that IBM are "a joke", and that their work is "sloppy" with "lots of mistakes". The failings are blamed on poor management, with the source adding that the organisation is suffering significant delays to ongoing projects.

"AECOM has crazy amounts of backlog," the insider began. "We win a lot of contracts, but we have barely been profitable. Poor management is what I have heard. IBM is a joke. It seems they have assigned their cheapest labour to AECOM to save money. And that labour is low skill. They don't care, and they produce sloppy work, with lots of mistakes."

This comes soon after an earlier claim that CEO and chairman of the board Mike Burke was asked to leave, prior to his retirement announcement. The source alleged that Burke was attempting to rush through the sale of the organisation to WSP Global before his departure, in order to gain financially from the deal.

Another insider previously contacted Computing to allege that IBM staff lack the proper experience to do their jobs.

"This was an epic failure as most were clueless, and many left due to not knowing how to do their job. I still speak with many engineers who claim IT support has gotten much worse. No one knows how to fix anything," they added.

The source also said that service level agreements are regularly missed.

"IBM has SLAs that they do not meet daily. For instance they are supposed to complete a ticket within a certain time after it is submitted. Most of these are not met."

Both IBM and AECOM have been contacted for comment.

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