AECOM just told the market the design side of infrastructure is still booming. The engineering giant reported a record $26.2 billion backlog for fiscal Q2 2026, up 8% year over year, and raised its full-year guidance on the strength of it.
Revenue landed at $3.8 billion, diluted EPS at $1.42, and segment margins hit a record 16.5%. On a trailing-twelve-month basis, AECOM’s operating margin of 16.8% now runs ahead of the 15.2% average across peers like Jacobs, Tetra Tech, Stantec, and WSP. Management pushed adjusted full-year EPS guidance up to a range of $5.90 to $6.10.
Backlog is the tell
The number that matters most is the design book-to-burn ratio of 1.2, meaning AECOM is signing new design work faster than it’s billing the old. That’s the leading indicator for a professional-services firm. A record backlog built on a 1.2 ratio says the pipeline of large public and institutional projects hasn’t slowed, whatever’s happening in the softer commercial market.
Where the work is
The design and advisory work AECOM sells sits upstream of exactly the kind of megaprojects filling the pipeline, from transit to water to the Northeast Corridor rebuild that includes the Portal North Bridge. The firm’s own read is that infrastructure demand has held up better than the headlines about a K-shaped construction market suggest.
The valuation gap AECOM keeps flagging, its stock trading below where its margins would imply, is a separate argument for another day. For the sector, the signal is simpler: the biggest engineering backlog in the company’s history says the front end of the project cycle is still full. Coverage of the quarter is in the earnings recap.