Worley seals joint venture with RHE

By JILLIAN TALBOT

Auckland engineering consultancy firm Worley Group has secured a 50 per cent holding in Argenta, the information technology consulting arm of RHE Group.

The joint venture takes the combined group's current revenue to more than $50 million.

Worley is one of New Zealand's largest employee-owned consultancy companies and undertakes 40 per cent of its projects offshore.

With more than 400 staff in New Zealand, Australia and South-east Asia, it specialises in infrastructure management and industrial construction projects such as power and energy generation.

It recently won an Association of Consulting Engineers of New Zealand award of excellence for building the largest fibre-optic telecommunications system in Indonesia.

Worley managing director Ian Parton said the potential to provide information technology to overseas clients was substantial.

It also had a big amount of leverage potential because of its large client base.

Worley approached RHE as a potential business partner after it had considered, for some time, establishing an IT base under its existing business.

Dr Parton said Worley hoped to increase its stake in Argenta, although RHE executive director Mark Hamilton said he was pleased with the "existing balanced arrangement."

RHE is an IT company that provides business and information planning and support and e-commerce solutions to companies.

It has big corporate clients in banking and insurance, the airline industry, telecommunications and with computer system firms.

It delivers end-to-end services from the development of IT strategies.