Fluor 2008 Annual Report Download - page 36

this annual report on Form 10-K under the caption ‘‘Operating Information by Segment,’’ which is
incorporated herein by reference.
Competitive Strengths
As an integrated world class provider of engineering, procurement, construction, maintenance and
project management services, we believe that our business model allows us the opportunity to bring to our
clients a compelling business offering that combines excellence in execution, safety, cost containment and
experience. In that regard, we believe that our business strategy, which is based on certain of our core
competencies, provides us with some significant competitive advantages:
Excellence in Execution Given our proven track record of project completion and client satisfaction, we
believe that our ability to design, engineer, construct and manage complex projects often in geographically
challenging locations gives us a distinct competitive advantage. We strive to complete our projects on
schedule while meeting or exceeding all client specifications. In an increasingly competitive environment,
we are also continually emphasizing cost controls so that our clients achieve not only their performance
requirements but also their budgetary needs.
Financial Strength We believe that we are among the most financially sound companies in our sector.
We strive to maintain a solid financial condition, placing an emphasis on having a strong balance sheet and
an investment grade credit rating. Our financial strength provides us a valuable competitive advantage in
terms of access to bonding capacity and letters of credit which are critical to our business. Our strong
balance sheet also allows us to fund our strategic initiatives, pay dividends, pursue opportunities for growth
and better manage unanticipated cash flow variations.
Safety One of our core values and a fundamental business strategy is our constant pursuit of safety.
Both for us and our clients, the maintenance of a safe workplace is a key business driver. In the areas in
which we provide our services, we have delivered and continue to deliver excellent safety performance,
with our safety record being significantly better than the national industry average. In our estimation, a
safe job site decreases risks on a project site, assures a proper environment for our employees and
enhances their morale, reduces project cost and exposures and generally improves client relations. We
believe that our safety record is one of our most distinguishing features.
Global Execution Platform As the largest U.S.-based, publicly-traded engineering, procurement,
construction and maintenance company, we have a global footprint with employees in 60 countries. Our
global presence allows us to build local relationships that permit us to capitalize better on opportunities
near these locations. It also provides comfort to our larger internationally-based clients that we know and
understand the markets where they may elect to use our services and allows us to mobilize quickly to those
locations where projects arise.
Market Diversity The company serves multiple markets across a broad spectrum of industries. We feel
that our market diversity is a key strength of our company that helps to mitigate the impact of the
cyclicality in the markets we serve. Just as important, our concentrated attention on market diversification
allows us to achieve more consistent growth and deliver solid returns. We believe that our continued
strategy of maintaining a good mixture within our entire business portfolio permits us to both focus on our
more stable business markets and to capitalize on developing our cyclical markets when the timing is
appropriate. This strategy also allows us to better weather any downturns in a specific market by
emphasizing markets that are strong.
Long-Term Client Relationships While we aggressively work towards pursuing and serving new clients,
we also believe that the long-term relationships we have built with our major clients, often after decades of
work with many of them, allow us to better understand and be more responsive to their requirements.
These types of relationships also facilitate a better understanding of many of the risks that we might face
with a project or a client, thereby allowing us to better anticipate risks, solve problems and manage our
risk. We have worked towards an alliance-like relationship with many of these clients and, in doing so, we
better understand their business needs.
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