GHD has announced another major merger, joining with North American consultancy Conestoga-Rovers & Associates (CRA) to expand its global portfolio.

The merger will see GHD rise to a total 8,500 employees, with 3,000 coming from CRA's mostly North American branches.

GHD already has a strong presence in Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the United Kingdom and the Middle East, and has shown its intention for expansion recently with its acquisition of Australian Architecture firm, Woodhead.

CRA and GHD have now officially merged and all ongoing employee shareholders in CRA will become shareholders of GHD. This feature of the merger makes it one of the largest private stock transactions in the engineering and environmental consulting industry.

"This is one of the largest true mergers to have occurred in our industry. We are building on the strengths of two leading companies to create a global team of more than 8,500 people across five continents,” says Ian Shepherd, GHD CEO.

“We are adding significant growth and scale to our business, while retaining the advantages of our private, employee-ownership business model for creating client value."

Last week Architecture and Design also reported that Grieve Gillett and Dimitty Andersen Architects were merging, bringing together over forty years of award-winning, multidisciplinary architecture.

The new practice, GGDAA had six projects nominated across four categories in this year’s SA Architecture Awards, four of the projects collected prizes at the awards ceremony on July 4.