It's light fantastic at Moscow soccer stadium

Overseas work makes up five per cent of the work in the company's Leeds office but this is expected to grow as it takes advantages of opportunities in countries including the US, Russia and Abu Dhabi.

One of the most recent wins for the company's lighting division, led by Lee Barker-Field, is for the new 125m Spartak Stadium in Moscow.

The company will design the lighting, which includes up to 350 floodlights, at the 80,000-seater stadium.

Mr Barker-Field, Aecom's head of lighting, said: "Lighting these days is more than just functional. It is used to add additional excitement to the sport and the stadium. Developers are looking to maximise the flexibility of the stadium and host a variety of events there."

The lighting team has also attracted overseas work in the Middle East, the US and Canada and is looking at opportunities in Australia and New Zealand.

"Most of the work we do is in the leisure, entertainment and cultural sectors, so we are looking at countries that are building infrastructure," said Mr Barker-Field.

Meanwhile, the firm's bridge engineering division has designed a new system to dehumidify cables on suspension bridges to extend the life of the cables and stop corrosion.

After working on the UK's suspension bridges, including the Humber Bridge, the team is now exporting its knowledge to the US and elsewhere.

One of the biggest projects on which it is working is maintaining a pair of suspension bridges, dating back to the 1950s and 1970s, in Chesapeake Bay, in Maryland.

It also won a contract to advise on a new suspension bridge to be constructed in Izmit Bay, Turkey, which aims to be the second longest suspension bridge in the world.

Mark Bulmer, technical director, said: "We design systems to blow dry air through the cables to stop corrosion and this has been noticed by a few people in the US, so we are hoping that this could be a new market for us.

"This is the first project we have done there so all eyes are on this one to see what happens."

He added: "We are having to sell our expertise with cable dehumidification overseas now because we have done the UK bridges."

Aecom employs 220 staff in the Leeds office, which has a 14m turnover. The company also has a small base in York.

The majority of Aecom's work is in the UK's public sector, with education making up half the work and about 20 per cent in the health sector.

The company also works in energy, sustainability, waste, retail, private development and rail infrastructure.

Like most companies in the construction sector, Aecom has suffered a downturn in work over the last two years and has had to make a number of redundancies.

But Martyn Howie, business development manager, said international work would help to offset any project shortfalls in the public sector in the future.

Looking to the future, Peter Drenon, director for Leeds, said his "five-year plan" is to "maintain stability, to ride out the current economic position and be in a position to grow and service the market demands as we emerge from this position".

Merger that created global company earning billions in annual revenue

Aecom was founded 20 years ago by Richard Newman from the merger of five companies in the Ashland group.

The name began as an acronym for Architecture, Engineering, Consulting, Operations and Management.

Since then, more than 30 companies have joined the company, and, in 2007, it became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange.

It is now one of the biggest companies in the US, earning more than 3.8bn in revenue annually, and employing 47,000 architects, engineers, designers, planners, scientists and management professionals, serving clients in more than 100 countries around the world.

Aecom employs 220 staff in the Leeds office, which has a 14m turnover. The company also has a small base in York.