An update from our CEO
Welcome to our annual Ingenuity Review.
At PA, we believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future. That’s our purpose, and it guides our every action. Our purpose runs deep – we’ve been living it for over 80 years, seeking out complex challenges to change the face of businesses, economies, and societies for the better.
Operating across the globe, we bring together humans and technology in innovative ways – always looking forward and finding opportunities to drive positive change. We continue to evolve a dynamic culture, underpinned by shared values that encapsulate how we behave when we’re at our best.
Insight and impact
Bringing ingenuity to life sets a high bar. It requires us to continuously anticipate, predict, provoke, galvanise, and lead from the front to solve our clients’ toughest challenges. Our strategy makes clear that we’re perfectly positioned to address the biggest megatrends shaping the world today, like harnessing data and AI to power business transformation, keeping people and nations safe, creating healthier humans, responding to evolving consumer and regulatory demands, and building advanced infrastructure for a sustainable future.
In the face of such incredible opportunities and challenges, our teams of experts are dedicated in their pursuit of helping clients to find innovative ways to grow products and services and to transform their businesses. We do this through deep collaboration and partnership with clients, by applying breakthrough technologies, and by bringing together the very best people for each engagement, people with deep experience and diverse perspectives.
You can see this in how we accelerated innovation time-to-market for Unilever with a first-of-its kind AI-powered R&D engine. Our data science expertise significantly improved punctuality for Heathrow Airport. And our work with a global life sciences consortium improved the speed and effectiveness of research and development within clinical trials.
The results speak for themselves: 98 percent of our clients say they’d recommend us. And it was particularly pleasing to see double digit growth with clients in the US in the second half of the year.
A culture we live by
Fostering a culture of belonging, where everyone is supported to be their best selves, means we do our best work. Impactful, purpose-led work that resonates with us, makes us feel proud, and propels exceptional careers.
This is achieved through unique opportunities, the right benefits, education, systems, and support, as well as through caring and inclusive teams, and a workplace that prioritises health and wellbeing. We advocate for wider perspectives and greater connection, and this is extended to the communities in which we serve. The positive impact we have on our communities, including through The PA Foundation, is far-reaching and always deeply rewarding on a personal level.
In 2024, we laid the groundwork for the launch of our new PA Values, which underpin our purpose and culture, and we look forward to formally rolling them out in 2025.
Looking forward
As we look forward, I’m confident we have the right strategy that will help us do the very best for our clients and our people, and grow PA.
And whilst the year ahead will no doubt present its fair share of challenging global macro-economic and political conditions for leaders everywhere, we’re seeing strong demand from clients seeking actionable innovation: bringing novel solutions to market faster, unlocking more value from data and AI, creating organisation-wide digital transformation, and accelerating results-focused outcomes.
In response, we’ll continue to leverage the full strength of our expert teams and breakthrough technologies to tackle each challenge, delivering industry-disrupting insights and driving scalable impact.
Our partnership with our strategic investor Jacobs will enable us to deliver even more client value, combining our innovation and transformation expertise with Jacobs’ skills in infrastructure and advanced manufacturing. Future-focused and relentlessly outcomes-driven, the strength of our partnership lies in our ability to deliver end-to-end solutions, from strategy and planning through to design, programme management, and implementation. I think Bob Pragada, CEO of Jacobs, summed it up best when he said: “At Jacobs, we believe that the power of collaboration drives innovation and impact. Our partnership with PA Consulting exemplifies this—bringing together complementary expertise to deliver smarter, more resilient solutions for our clients and the communities we serve.”
I’m excited for the year ahead. We have an outstanding team, doing incredible work for clients, with one another, and with our communities. We have clients who trust us with their biggest challenges and value our collaborative approach – to them we say thank you. And guiding it all, we have our purpose – we believe in the power of ingenuity to build a positive human future – which we’ll continue to exemplify in everything we do.
A message from our Chair
When clients need help turning their biggest challenges into opportunities, they call PA. Our team’s deep sector expertise, ability to combine the right skills for each job, innovative approaches, and absolute dedication to our purpose means we deliver outstanding results in true partnership with our clients. I’m incredibly proud of our team and the impact they make every day.”
