Atkins history

During 1945, Atkins was invited to consult on the planned expansion of the Port Talbot Steelworks and subsequently acted as the civil and structural design engineer for the project.

The venture was not Atkin's only business endeavour, having acquired London Ferro-Concrete from his prior employers; he continued to actively manage both firms up until 1950.

Doctor Robert C. Atkins received his M.D. from Cornell University Medical School in 1955 and after finishing three cardiology-focused residencies, opened a private practice in New York City.

Starting in 1963, Doctor Atkins immersed himself in medical research on nutrition and found studies that showed carbohydrate restriction, as opposed to calorie restriction, provided weight loss results, without significant hunger.

Doctor Atkins first wrote about the dangers of a carb-rich diet in 1972.

Up until 1982, the year in which he retired, William Akins served as the company's chairman.

1986: WS Atkins Group decides to spin off consulting operations, including WS Atkins & Partners as WS Atkins Consultants; the company's remaining assets are regrouped under a separate company, Atkins Holdings Ltd.; employees are given option to buy as much as 60 percent of the company's shares.

William Atkins died in 1989 as the company prepared to launch a public offering.

1990: WS Atkins calls off first public offering after the outbreak of the Persian Gulf War strands a number of its employees in Kuwait.

Michael Jeffries was named CEO in 1995 and took the company public the following year.

In 1996, the company picked up its first acquisition, that of Cleveland, England-based quantity surveyors Faithful & Gould.

In 1997 Doctor Atkins’ New Diet Revolution became a New York Times bestseller and remained a bestseller for five years.

By 1998, Atkins's expansion encouraged it to restructure its operations, abandoning its former regional structure for one grouped around three core business areas, Transportation, Property, and Industry.

Atkins took a break from acquisitions in 2000 as it integrated its purchases from the year before.

Atkins returned to its expansion through acquisition program in 2001.

The Temple University researchers used the 2002 version of the Atkins Diet described in “Doctor Atkins’ New Diet Revolution” as the model for the low-carbohydrate diet used in the study.

Atkins was one of the five shareholders in Metronet, the London Underground maintenance company that failed in 2007, after which Atkins was forced to write off its investment in the venture.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (2008), written by lead author Iris Shai, RD, PhD, showed that a low-carbohydrate diet like Atkins had a more favorable effect on blood lipid levels than both the Mediterranean diet or a low–fat diet.

In 2010 The PBSJ Corporation joined Atkins.

During January 2011, an Atkins-led consortium was selected to engineer a 180 km high speed line between the Danish capital of Copenhagen and the German border.

Whether it’s the London 2012 Olympics, the Burj al Arab, Dubai metro, the channel tunnel or the ITER experimental fusion reactor, Atkins has worked on some of the most iconic and mould-breaking infrastructure projects.

More recently, a 2013 study showed that low-carb diets are just as effective as Mediterranean diets in improving cardiovascular risk factors in people with diabetes.

During October 2014, Houston-based oil and gas offshore engineering business Houston Offshore Engineering was acquired for £45 million, added another 150 people to the business and increased the headcount of oil and gas specialists to over 1,000 within its operations worldwide.

In April 2016, the company announced the acquisition of the Projects, Products and Technology (PP&T) segment of EnergySolutions for £206 million, strengthening Atkins' nuclear multidisciplinary capability to a 2,000-strong global team.

On 21 April, it was announced that the takeover deal had been agreed; the move was approved by shareholders in June 2017.