The decision to reduce its footprint was announced as the group said it had enjoyed significantly improved operating margin in the third quarter of nearly 11%.

During the period Arcadis strengthened its balance sheet successfully completing a €150m re-financing while raising operating profit 22% to €66m.

Peter Oosterveer, CEO Arcadis, said: “As part of our continuous reorientation to focus on regions which support our strategic framework, we have decided to reduce our footprint in the Middle East.

“We will continue to satisfy the contractual obligations we have committed to, as well as balancing our employees’ interests, which means that we expect this process to take several years to complete.”

He added: “Notwithstanding the strong performance, we do see the impact of Covid-19 in some parts of our business, in particular in our work for private sector clients as well in the retail sector of CallisonRTKL, which led to a non-cash goodwill impairment for this business.

“At the same time, our strong focus on our public clients has allowed us to win a large number of projects and enabled the growth of our backlog especially in infrastructure and environment.”