Good morning, and welcome to the WSP Virtual Investor Day. I am Quentin Weber, Senior Advisor, Investor Relations. I would like to thank you for taking the time to join today's event, during which we will be discussing our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan. Note this event is being recorded and a replay will be published on our website. The presentation will also be available for download after today's event.
Please note that you have a chat box at the bottom of your screen. Questions can be submitted throughout the presentation, and we will do our best to answer them during our planned Q&A sessions. During the call, we will be making some forward-looking statements, and actual results could be different from those expressed or implied. We undertake no responsibility to update or revise any of these statements unless legislation requires us to do so.
Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements are listed in our most recent Management Discussion and Analysis, which is available on our website and on SEDAR. Also, during the call, we may refer to certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are defined in our Management Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2021, which can be found on SEDAR and on our website. Our MD&A also includes reconciliations of non-IFRS measures to the most directly comparable IFRS measures.
Management believes that these non-IFRS measures provide useful information to investors regarding the corporation's financial condition and the results of operation as they provide additional key metrics of its performance.
These non-IFRS measures are not recognized under IFRS, do not have any standardized meaning prescribed under IFRS, and may differ from similarly named measures as reported by other issuers, and accordingly may not be comparable. These measures should not be viewed as a substitute for the related financial information prepared in accordance with IFRS. With that, I will now turn over the webcast to WSP's President and Chief Executive Officer, Alexandre L'Heureux.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the launch of our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan. This is an exciting time for WSP, and I am pleased to host this Virtual Investor Day live from Montreal. Before going any further, please note we will briefly be covering our Q4 and 2021 fiscal year results during this Investor Day, as we held our conference call earlier this morning. For those of you who may have missed it, our results and presentation are available under the Investor Relations section of our website.
As we face a collective turning point in our climate, resources, and communities, our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan, entitled Future Ready, sets ambitious goals to push ourselves even further as an organization to be more, to do more in an ever-changing landscape. This plan was designed following a year of internal reflection and extensive consultations with our key stakeholders, our people, our clients, and our shareholders. Throughout this process, several things have come to light.
Firstly, the long-term vision for our company became strikingly clear, giving our stakeholders insight into the transformational market trends we face. By capitalizing on our strengths, such as our global presence and multidisciplinary expertise, in addition to the ingenuity of our experts, we believe WSP is uniquely positioned to create an enduring legacy of greater impact. Secondly, even though we may have unfinished business on the progress we wanted to make in our last strategic cycle, resulting from the challenges we collectively faced, we are on the right path with the right operating model.
By staying focused on our core business and remaining true to our DNA, especially in this current environment, we will continue to do what we do best while elevating our business to where it needs to be to deliver on our short-term and long-term ambition. Thirdly, the brightest in our industry are looking to work for a company that provides for a flexible and adaptable environment with a culture that fosters collaboration, empowerment, innovation, diversity, and inclusivity.
Building on our culture, we will continue to foster a best-in-class work environment led by an approachable people-focused leaders to support our professionals in reaching their full potential. Fourthly, our clients increasingly rely on our multidisciplinary services approach and innovative solutions to respond to their complex needs. The escalating pressure on our clients due to talent pool shortages drives the need for increased partnerships, with WSP becoming an extension of their teams.
Lastly, through our discipline acquisition and organic growth strategy, we believe WSP will be presented with extraordinary opportunities to complement our platform with people and firms that will enable our organization to reach the next level. The time has come to further assert our ambitions and industry leadership through the forces of change that drive us, namely ESG, innovation, and technology.
We will further evolve our organization, reflecting the needs of both our professionals and our clients and creating a platform where our insightful service and advice, cutting-edge expertise, and smart design provide the highest standard of services to clients. I am filled with confidence, inspiration, and gratitude for the direction we are heading as we begin a new chapter in WSP's journey.
In addition to presenting our 2022-2024 global strategic plan and long-term vision, we are pleased to use this opportunity to introduce the new members of our teams. Since our last Investor Day, we have assembled a strong leadership team and now have one of the most dynamic, experienced teams in the industry. As you will soon hear, our leadership team is ready to take on the challenges and aspiration we have set for ourselves in WSP. What will also become clear from this presentation is our purpose. We exist to future-proof our cities and environments.
Despite the ever-changing landscape, our commitment to our purpose remains resolute. It courses through every facet of our company, anchored in our beliefs and guiding principles to collaborate, rethink, and innovate while never compromising on our integrity, quality, or safety. Unsurprisingly, it is this purpose that will continue to propel us into the future. As part of our 2019–2021 Global Strategic Plan , we challenge ourselves to expand our horizons, setting ambitious goals to push ourselves even further as an organization.
Yesterday, we released our fourth quarter and fiscal 2021 results, proudly bringing closure to our 2019/2021 Strategic Cycle. Thanks to our foundational strength and the dedication and resilience of our people, we have realized our 2021 St rategic Financial ambitions, despite living through a period of extraordinary changes.
We now have a robust balance sheet that can support growth, and our clients have continued to choose WSP for our innovative solutions, resulting in a sustained and healthy backlog, which, combined with very favorable market trends, represent a solid foundation on which to build our next strategic cycle. In addition to delivering our financial ambitions, and despite having two years of our 2019/2021 Strategic Cycle impacted by the pandemic, there is so much to be proud of when looking back at our accomplishments over the last three years.
Today, with 55,000 people globally, we generate CAD 8 billion of net revenue and above CAD 1.3 billion in adjusted EBITDA. Thanks to the achievements of our 2019/2021 Strategic Plan, we are boldly redefining the role of a professional consulting firm by applying our state-of-the-art expertise and the collective ingenuity of our people in order to imagine and create future-ready places to clients and communities locally and across the globe. Our expertise is digital, and we leverage technology in everything that we do.
Our work is of strategic importance in preparing for the future, and we are at the heart of climate change consciousness. We accomplish this through the most diversified platform in our industry with leading positions in transportation infrastructure, in property and buildings, and with last year's addition of our Golder colleagues, we have become the largest earth and environment firm. Today, WSP has a platform primed for growth and capable of capitalizing on transformational market trends.
WSP's Future Ready program, which is embedded across the entire organization, uniquely positions us to be the advisor of choice for our clients as they navigate transformational market trends by driving a mindset shift towards developing for long-term resilience and adaptability. As market trends continue to shape the world of tomorrow, we will continue to apply our Future Ready mindset while expanding our multidisciplinary expertise to tackle our clients' complex needs. In the process of developing our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan, the long-term vision for our company became strikingly clear.
As we look through the lens of our diverse stakeholders, and given that many of the world's most compelling and urgent global transformational trends are well aligned with WSP's strengths, expertise, and service offerings, we believe WSP is uniquely positioned to create an enduring legacy of greater impact. Build upon our solid foundation, our long-term vision sets our destination for WSP to be the undisputed leader in our industry. This vision sets distinct ambitions for WSP to act as a bold change agent for the clients and communities it serves.
Raise up and empower the diversity of communities and attract the brightest minds to solve the most complex challenges through exceptional service and the trust of our clients, all while investing in our experts, technology, and platform, so our people can then effectively focus on their passion and purpose as they continue to change the world. Becoming the undisputed leader in our industry also puts us on the trajectory with aspiration to double in size, achieve sustainable industry-leading organic growth, and realize adjusted EBITDA margins above 20%.
Our path is clear. Our solid track record for growth has always been disciplined, strategic to our purpose, and in the best interest of our stakeholders. We cannot predict with certainty when we will arrive to this ambitious destination, but I can assure you we will get there. The potential of what we can be is before us and it is now up to us to capture it. Let us now turn our discussion to the first leg of our journey, our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan that will help chart our course and make considerable progress on our way to becoming the undisputed leader in the industry.
If I can summarize our Strategic A ction Plan into four words that encapsulate what we are trying to achieve, they would be, one, foster, lead, elevate, or transform. Over the next three years, we will continue to create value for our stakeholders by evolving our foundational pillars to one, or first, foster the ingenuity of our people. WSP's success relies on the ingenuity and expertise of our professionals. They power WSP.
We are committed to making significant efforts to provide our 55,000 people with a newly imagined best-in-class technology-enabled, inclusive working environment aimed at empowering them to deliver on their full potential while providing an employee experience that attracts, develops, and retains the best and brightest. Next, we will lead through technical excellence and expertise. We are recognized as a key player in the industry landscape, delivering some of the largest, most complex and transformative projects globally.
Over the next three years, we will seek to further leverage our global presence and ability, market leadership, and the breadth of our expertise to better meet our clients' needs through accelerated organic growth and our proven disciplined approach to acquisitions. We will continue to embed and grow our digital expertise and solutions to augment the value of our clients' assets.
By 2024, our industry-leading platform will be even more balanced and resilient as we further increase diversification through scaling our capabilities in our core sectors and geographies, and developing other sectors and services with significant growth opportunities. Third, we will also elevate the standard of client experience. Over the next three years, we will elevate our partnership with our clients to a new level, fully crystallizing our role as a trusted partner.
We will continue to expand our discipline to bring WSP's complete technical, advisory, and digital capabilities to tackle our client needs while providing an industry-leading client experience. Lastly, we will drive leading performance and efficiency through transformation. To further leverage the scale of our organization, we will make key investment in our business practices, technology, and workplace, further increasing our agility and capacity through best-in-class digital resources and tools to capture market opportunities, driving elevated client delivery and a world-class employee experience.
As mentioned earlier, and as will become evident as we progress through today's presentation, there are three main driving forces of change that continue to shape our organization. These driving forces of change, namely ESG, innovation, and technology, will further evolve our foundational pillars and will continue to be the basis of WSP's strengths and competitive advantage over the next strategic cycle and beyond.
I would now like to take a moment to explore each of these forces of change, starting with innovation. Inherently, we are an innovative organization driven by a culture of ingenuity, learning, and excellence. At WSP, we know innovation touches everything we do, from our daily projects to distinctive operating practices, from managerial methods to business strategies. At its heart, innovation is a concept that intertwine with creativity, using ingenuity and expertise to create something new. Put simply, we innovate because the world doesn't stand still.
There has never been a greater opportunity or imperative to enable resilience. We will continue to build on this foundation, and over the next three years, through the key initiatives listed before you, one cannot speak of innovation without also talking about technology. The advancement of technology is changing our industry, and we are ready. WSP is at the forefront of integrated, digital solutions, and we have been leveraging digital tools with traditional engineering services for decades to support client outcomes in innovative ways.
The reality is that all types of physical assets have an increasing component of digital technology, and it is the interplay of digital, physical, and environmental items that is critical to design and operations. Consequently, our skills are extending into data science and analysis. Therefore, it is an imperative and an opportunity for WSP to lead in digital technology. Later, our regional CEOs will provide examples of our projects showcasing our expertise in this space.
To further ingrain our digital mindset, our objective is to drive higher than WSP average growth in our digital advisory services over the next three years through the key initiatives listed before you. I would now like to turn to the next force of change that underpins everything that we do, our unwavering ESG commitments, which will be shortly covered in greater detail. The commitments we have made to ESG are fundamental and non-negotiable, and what strikes me the most when I look back at the accomplishment of our past strategic cycle is how many were related to ESG.
We have become the leader in the earth environment sector with a team of 14,000 professionals, and the ESG work we carry out for our clients as well as for our stakeholders is widely recognized as top of class. I would also like to mention our commitment to leading by example in how we operate our business and in the services we provide to our clients. Against this backdrop, we have been giving careful thought to who we are and the role that we play in creating tomorrow's future. Exiting from certain sectors or industries might seem like the right thing to do.
However, as our professionals, clients, and investors understand, abandoning the field altogether would mean leaving some stakeholders behind and would not serve the greater goal of transitioning to a cleaner world. Drawing on the wisdom of our experts, real change comes from assisting clients who share our goal of moving swiftly towards an equitable, inclusive, and net zero world. Therefore, it is our aim to focus on projects that are consistent with that journey or more fundamentally, with what we stand for.
Now that we have a high-level overview of our 2022-2024 Global Strategic Action Plan and the forces of change that will continue to propel our organization forward, let's briefly look at how this translates into financial performance. By 2024, we intend to grow net revenues in excess of 30%, adjusted EBITDA by 40%, and adjusted net earnings per share by 50%. We aspire to grow significantly through robust organic growth and a disciplined acquisition strategy while delivering improved margin profile, bringing us one step closer to our long-term vision.
I won't go any further, as we will provide the details of our financial ambitions later today. I will now invite André-Martin Bouchard, our pillar lead for ESG, to discuss our ESG commitments and how we will measure progress on this front over our 2022-2024 strategic cycle.
Thank you very much, Alex. Good morning, everyone. I'm André-Martin Bouchard, Global Director, Earth & Environment, and Global Executive Director, ESG, at WSP. As Alex mentioned, ESG is an essential part of who we are, what we do, and what we want to be recognized for. Following on the addition of Golder to our organization, we became the leading earth and environment and ESG advisory firm in the world.
With approximately 14,000 experts across the world and across disciplines, from climatologists, geologists, water experts to ground engineers, we can offer unparalleled expertise to our clients globally. As an industry leader in ESG, we want to maintain this position by building on the momentum we developed during the last cycle. ESG is an evolving landscape, and we must continuously renew ourselves to stay relevant, and we are doing so on the back of our Future Ready mindset.
One of the ways we can be most impactful is through the services and advice we provide to our clients to support their transition to a low-carbon world. We will drive the energy transition and response to climate change by providing sustainable, resilient solutions to our clients. ESG, however, is much broader than sustainability. Whether we are delivering high-speed rail systems, designing transportation infrastructure to provide access to remote communities, or supporting adaptation to climate change risks, we are committed to finding sustainable and equitable solutions to the challenges the future brings.
Our ESG commitments are fundamental and non-negotiable. They are driven by our dedication to leading with integrity, empowering our diverse communities, and leveraging our expertise for the benefit of all our stakeholders. By 2024, we aim to increase our revenues from clean activities to over 50% of our total revenues. These are revenues from activities that positively impact the environment and support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. Over the next three years, we will continue to further our initiatives in each of the environmental, social, and governance spheres.
Starting with environment, we aspire to be the advisor of choice in the world's green transition. To achieve this, we must first lead by example, and we are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our operations through a science-based and data-driven approach. By 2024, we plan to reduce by 40% the greenhouse gas emissions under our direct control, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions, and reduce by 15% the emissions associated with our supply chain, namely the Scope 3 emissions. By doing so, we are front-loading our efforts for accelerated impact to reach our net zero commitment by 2040.
In fact, our expectation is that two-thirds of the work will be executed in the next three years and is in line with the most ambitious aim of the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Now on to social. At WSP, we need to become as diversified as the communities we serve. This diversity should be visible at all levels of the organization. Over this strategic cycle, we aim to increase by 5% year-over-year the presence of women and underrepresented groups in middle management, senior leadership, and board of director positions.
This will be top of mind both in terms of recruitment and in our internal promotions. As a result of promoting an authentic culture, this should translate to upper quartile scores in employees' sense of trust and belonging. Beyond statutory responsibilities, it is our moral responsibility to make health and safety part of our ethos to ensure everyone goes home safely each and every night. As a result, we are committed to elevating and standardizing the best safety practices across all our regions through continued training and safety education for our people.
Moving on to governance now. Strong and transparent governance practices are an essential factor in WSP's overall success. We will continue to place ethics and integrity at the center of everything we do and further promote a speak-up culture through our world-class ethics program. Throughout the next few years, we will continue placing emphasis on business integrity. We will do this notably by continuing to have all our employees complete business integrity training.
We will also be taking concrete actions through our business partner onboarding processes to have business partners who understand and abide by our high expectations on business integrity. We will also continue to carry out our ESG program under the ongoing leadership of our board, our senior leadership team, and our global ESG committee. Our success will be measured by our results, not only our efforts. As part of our global leaders' incentive compensation will be tied to reaching our ESG targets.
In closing, we are pleased to be recognized for our ESG efforts with very strong third-party ratings. While we take pride in those recognitions, it should be noted we never set out to win accolades. We want to play a pivotal role in the decades ahead in achieving a sustainable, equitable, and prosperous future for our employees, our clients, and our communities. I will now pass it over to Megan Van Pelt, our people and culture pillar leader.
Thank you, André-Martin . Hello, I'm Megan Van Pelt, Chief Human Resources Officer. Our future at WSP is collective. We will have the greatest impact as a firm by working together. As Alex has said, our people power WSP. They are highly effective, passionate, and engaged with the communities we serve. Because of that, our growth is dependent on a people and culture strategy that is founded in WSP's purpose and guiding principles and harness our workforce's ingenuity and allows it to grow. Investing in our people is more critical today than it ever has been before.
Across the world, our industry faces tight labor markets. Our existing and prospective employees have far different expectations than they did just two years ago. While competitive compensation is a minimal requirement, today's expectations go well beyond salary. People are looking for two things, possibility and purpose. First, possibility. This means a flexible, supportive workplace that facilitates work-life balance, an inclusive culture that allows people to be their authentic selves, and the prospect of carving out career paths across different business lines or even countries.
The second is purpose. People want to invest their time in meaningful work, to make a difference, and create a positive impact in their communities. Our people aspire to work on impactful projects that will serve future generations, and at WSP, we can give them that. We designed our strategic plan to deliver on those expectations, attracting and retaining the brightest minds. Over the next three years, as we expand through organic growth and acquisitions, we expect to onboard over 10,000 people a year, retain our top talent, and connect all employees to our goals through purpose and possibility.
How will we do that? We listened to our employees' feedback, and we're going to use that information to enhance our employees' experience. We challenged ourselves to build the workplace of the future that matches the ingenuity of the teammates that we have today. By embracing a hybrid work environment, we want to ensure we are focusing and fostering flexibility, trust, and a culture focused on holistic employee well-being. We want coming to work to feel like a meaningful reunion with colleagues and not an obligation.
We are reimagining and redesigning our offices to create collaborative spaces designed to bring our creativity, connectivity, mentorship, and technical innovation, not just between WSP colleagues, but between WSP and its clients as well. This redesign will enhance the hybrid model of working, introduce open concept multi-use areas, and transition away from traditional office desking, all while contributing to our GHG and net zero reduction targets. We also want to create career opportunities for our staff.
We want to upskill and unlock new capabilities so that, for instance, we can give a talented engineer the training she needs to become a talented manager or technical expert. In the next three years, you will see us leverage the collective talent at WSP across the globe. We will promote internal mobility, both upward and lateral, and across business lines and geographies. To do this, we are implementing a simplification initiative that will allow our people to spend more time doing what they love.
Through our investment in technology that we will cover a bit later, our teams can spend less time focused on administrative tasks and more time on our clients and their own career advancement. We are also establishing the WSP Way, focused on supporting our people as they pursue technical and functional excellence. This program will embed our culture globally and unify the core WSP practices, skills, and mindset across our 55,000 professionals.
This includes bringing a Future Ready approach to our work, connecting experts across WSP's global network to deliver innovative solutions to client challenges, leading inclusive teams, and providing best-in-class project delivery. Through common job architecture and workforce planning, we will match our talent and expertise with our clients' needs. This will not only open more diverse opportunities to our employees, it will also give us the capability to virtually bring our clients to where our experts sit, so they can benefit from WSP's global network of talent.
Our aim is to have a thriving, distributed workforce with the ability to work remotely on any project from anywhere with the same seamless WSP user experience. As André-Martin mentioned, throughout this process, we will remain focused and accountable on attracting and promoting women and members of our other underrepresented communities so that WSP can become as diversified as the communities it operates in. Investing in our people benefits our clients, which benefits our communities, and ultimately benefits WSP, creating a virtuous cycle of sustainable business.
Our success will be measured through several metrics. Through our people and culture action plan, we aim to fill 75% of the firm's leadership roles internally and increase the number of promotions by 5% annually. These promotions will increase our employees' career growth and their development. We will continue to listen to our employees, fostering a safe and inclusive environment, one that prioritizes our employees' well-being. We plan to see a greater than 1% yearly increase in retention with this focus.
Our ultimate goal is to grow a fulfilled team of experts that are shaping the world of tomorrow and who are proud of the contributions WSP makes in each of our local communities. Thank you for your time. I will now pass it on to Tom Smith, who is joining us virtually to present our client strategy.
Hello, I'm Tom Smith, Global Director of Property and Buildings. Clients are the lifeblood of our company, and the strong relationships and many interactions with our clients are key to our success. In essence, our client strategy aims to increase our organic growth through cross-selling new services, generating revenue synergies. Most importantly, by delivering a Future Ready approach and their very best client experience.
I am speaking to you from Dubai, and earlier this week I've also visited Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi, spending time with clients, including South Africa's leading data center company, Digital Realty Teraco, who we are working with not only in South Africa but also in Canada. Also, the UAE's leading leisure developer, Majid Al Futtaim, and that's a client that we've been working with since 2004.
This morning in Abu Dhabi, I met the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, for whom we are the lead consultant for both the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Zayed National Museum, two iconic buildings. Over the years, we have built an unbelievable and enviable list of Fortune 500 clients. Our top clients represent circa 25% of our revenues. Thus, we have more to gain by deepening our relationships with those clients than by chasing new ones.
As part of our 2022-2024 client strategy, we want to take our service to the next level by providing our clients with a richer value proposition that brings together the full capabilities of our firm. Underpinning this is a global client program that is sector-agnostic, encouraging a multidisciplinary workshop, which included Mark and Analina, who you'll meet later. We identified all global clients active in Europe, and we began to set targets for regional growth across all our sectors and services for those clients. Our clients are faced with three major issues.
One, how to earn their social license to operate. Two, how to decarbonize their activities. Third, how to stay digitally agile. WSP has deep knowledge in all those three areas. Relationship with our best clients and become not only their consultant of choice and trusted partner, but also their agent of change as they navigate these transformational issues. Just to give you an example, we are at the forefront of the global electrification of the automotive industry, designing new state-of-the-art manufacturing campuses for car makers such as Volvo in Sweden and BMW in South Africa and the USA.
Helping electric battery manufacturers and suppliers deliver their production facilities in a sustainable way. This interconnected expertise can only be found in a one-stop advisory firm that can help its clients and their customers navigate a myriad of challenges and opportunities, which are really just two sides of the same coin. Net zero carbon to digital transformation to community responsibility. To achieve this, we will need to impart our professional experts with the skills to better engage with our clients and to showcase WSP's innovative solutions across all our platforms.
You've just heard Megan talk about the way WSP go about things, and this extends to consultative skills and the client experience. We will also need to further enhance our environment and culture to foster collaboration and encourage cross-selling. Our goal is to efficiently leverage our global expertise and capability to deliver world-class solutions to our local, national, regional, and global clients. The measure of our success will be our client satisfaction and the repeat business they entrust us with.
We are determined to exceed their expectations through a blend of advisory, planning, design, project, and digital services whose superior strategic value will outshine that of our competitors in both client experience, feedback, and benchmarking. Our ambition is reflected in the annual targets you see on this slide. Namely, a 5% increase annually in client satisfaction ratings, 5% increase in organic growth, and 10% growth for our global client portfolio. I will now pass you back to Alexandre for the expertise strategy. Thank you.
Thank you, Tom, and we apologize if we had a bit of a glitch on the connection. WSP's past and present successes can be attributed to the technical expertise and commercial abilities of our people, forged by their profound understanding of the local market in which they operate. Our expertise is driven by our passion for solving project challenges through innovative engineering and advice. Elevating our business to the next levels requires an alignment between our expertise and market and client needs.
Before we look at where we are going and how we can plan to build our expertise, let's take a moment to discuss where we have just come from. In 2019, our business was dominated by our two core sectors, Transportation & Infrastructure and Property & Buildings, and then our engineering and design services. Through smart diversification and our organic growth and acquisition strategy, we have built a more resilient platform and expertise to better serve our clients.
Today, our business is more diversified than ever, with the addition of a leading franchise in earth and environment, and with a better balance between our engineering and design and strategic advisory services. As I mentioned earlier, we are on the right path with the right operating model. The next strategic cycle will be about bringing more balance and resilience in our industry-leading platform through our organic growth and disciplined acquisition strategy in order to help our clients succeed in a changing world.
Let's now look at the key elements of our growth strategy, starting with our geographies. Over the next three years, we will continue to invest predominantly in OECD countries, capitalizing on our regions where we have an existing leadership position while expanding in geographies where growth opportunities exist. Now turning to our sectors. We will build on our strengths and further scale our capabilities in our top three sectors of Transportation and Infrastructure, Earth and Environment, and Property and Buildings.
We will also expand into key sectors where significant growth opportunities exist, such as power and renewable energy and water. In terms of our services, we will continue to leverage our expertise in design and engineering while further investing in key value-creating services such as ESG, digital advisory, PMCM, planning and advisory, and government and federal services. The reason we want to capitalize on our three core sectors is more than just continuing to do what we do best.
It is also to harness the growth potential that exists, which I will now go over briefly and our regional leads will go over in more details after a break. Starting with the transportation infrastructure sector, when looking at the data points across our five largest regions, we see that all major markets have planned or are planning for significant infrastructure spend in the coming years. Therefore, with the leading franchise in T&I, it is only logical that we will continue to invest in this sector.
Now turning to our second-largest sector, Earth and Environment. The platform we have now, combined with the deep knowledge and technical excellence of our professionals, provides us with the opportunity to bring our practice to the C-suite level to act as a trusted advisor, guiding and informing a client's business strategy. Now moving to Property and Buildings. During the peak of the pandemic, investors raised concerns over the potential adverse effects this market could have on WSP's performance.
For us, we saw incredible potential. For example, the property and buildings of tomorrow are shifting towards being net zero. As such, in the years to come, we will capitalize on a position in green building space, retrofit, adaptive, reuse and building design, and leverage our centers of excellence in the U.K., the Nordics, and in Australia to positively impact our communities for years to come. Additionally, as we have done in the past, we will continue to invest in areas of high growth and change like healthcare, data center, and mission critical.
Now turning to our other key sectors. We have emerging platforms in both power and renewable energy, and also water, and significant opportunities for growth exist with both. First, let's look at power. We are in an energy transition cycle with transformation of the global energy sector from fossil-based to zero carbon. This will be achieved by the mass deployment of renewables, development of networks, and the rapid expansion of storage over the next decade. In fact, the annual CapEx for renewables network and storage is expected to reach close to $1 trillion by 2022, and $1.2 trillion by 2027.
In addition, European Parliament predicts that by 2050, offshore wind is forecast to be the single largest source of electricity in the European Union. There is also a growing opportunity for digital advisory services for clients who are integrating renewables and driving towards net zero, especially in OECD countries. Lastly, turning to our water sector. As we all know, water has become a critical asset globally as both climate change and population growth is putting more and more strains on this limited resource. Managing our water resources and creating more resilient environments is paramount.
Water touches all of WSP's core services from design, planning, advisory, and asset management, and we are uniquely positioned to advise across the full cycle of any water project. We approach water as a multidisciplinary science to help our clients, which includes hydrology, water modeling, biology, coastal, and etc. Therefore, over the next few years, we expect to make headwinds in this sector as well. Finally, we cannot talk about growth without discussing our proven and disciplined acquisition strategy.
Given our robust balance sheet, healthy acquisition pipeline, and with the integration of Golder mostly behind us, we believe the next three years have substantial potential to identify and complete transactions that will complement our existing platform. Additionally, our sound investment criteria when pursuing targets will remain unchanged. As a reminder, firstly, there must be a strategic imperative to a given transaction. Secondly, we need to share a like-minded vision and culture. Thirdly, the price consideration must allow us to create shareholder value.
Lastly, even if the first three criteria are met, we need to have the comfort that the target can be integrated. Given the opportunity for growth ahead, it should not come as a surprise that we have strong ambitions for the long-term vision of our company. Thank you now. I will now turn to Alain Michaud to talk about our operational excellence pillar at the moment. Thank you.
Thanks, Alex. Hi, everyone. I'm Alain Michaud, Global Chief Financial Officer. Let's now turn to another very critical pillar, our operational excellence. Today, WSP is an organization with over 55,000 people, 150,000 projects, and 100,000 clients across the globe. As you know, we aspire to grow. For us, operational excellence means supporting this ecosystem of people, projects, and clients, in addition to our growth aspiration by making available best-in-class resources and tools through a physical and virtual environment, allowing our people to focus their attention on making a significant impact.
Operational excellence is about optimizing productivity. It's about seamlessly sharing expertise across our global network. It's also about driving results without ever compromising on quality and value. Operational excellence is embedded in and has an impact on everything we do. Our vision over the next three years is to continue to challenge the status quo by intelligently and boldly transforming operational excellence with the objective to drive even better performance and efficiency. The timing is right.
Following years of rapid growth, we have succeeded in building a truly global and diversified platform, and now our plan is to further extract value from the global organization. Throughout the growth journey, we have welcomed new colleagues from different organizations and backgrounds, which has given us the benefit of first-hand exposure to different tools and working practices, and the opportunity to regularly question our ways of working.
Therefore, over the next three years, our goal is to further leverage the tremendous strength of our platform and provide an optimal environment for our people to thrive. We have identified three component to further leverage our global scale.
First, simplifies our ways of working. Second, enhance project delivery. Third, boost our digital platform and evolve our workplace. I will elaborate on each of these initiative in a moment, but I would first like to point out that despite the emphasis on transformation, our intention is certainly not to stop doing any of the things that have made us successful as of today. On the contrary, we intend to leverage our strong culture of continuous improvement, always pushing our organization to a higher level of performance. Let's now go over our initiatives.
Firstly, we are going to simplify our ways of working, engaging the entire organization by fostering an environment where feedback and ideas for simplification will be encouraged and celebrated. Our simplification campaign is aimed at enhancing the employee experience, for example, by reducing time spent on non-value-add activities. Simplifying does not mean cutting corners. Rather, it means ensuring that resources and practices are optimized. This is all with the goal of giving valuable time back to our people so that they can focus on client work and activities such as training and innovation, and to continue to encourage work-life balance.
Secondly, we will enhance project delivery by connecting our collective brilliance more efficiently, by building more commonality across the organization, by further digitally enabling our people, and by ensuring client satisfaction and an improved overall client experience. The simplification mindset that I just covered also extend to our project delivery practices. We will enhance our end-to-end project processes and automate, streamline, and better control project financials and execution. Improved project delivery practices globally will drive further efficiency, which is key to support our margin expansion ambitions.
Finally, we will boost our digital platform, I'm sorry, and tools to increase productivity, business insights, and to continue to remain relevant to our clients. We will further invest in our workplace with a continued focus on agility, innovation, and collaboration. Our investment dedicated to the digital space will include a wide range of digital enablers relevant to both our people and clients. It also include the implementation of a new global ERP system and increased capabilities in business analytics. This will provide increased efficiency and business insight on the most critical aspect of our business, our people, our projects, and our client, including access to predictive analytics and real-time data.
Turning to our targets. With our simplification campaign, our goal is to save 1 million hours. This represents approximately 1% of the total hours worked across the organization, or if you prefer, about 20 minutes per week per employee. This represents the equivalent of 500-600 additional resources. We are targeting an increase in adjusted EBITDA margin by 30-50 basis points annually, which will be driven by our transformation initiatives and our continued focus on all our margin expansion levers that have worked well in the past.
Finally, as a result of our workplace strategy, we will reduce our real estate costs and footprint by 20% based on the leases expiring in the next three years. This is not new for us. Rather, it's a continuation of the work we started over five years ago of making our workplace more agile and collaborative. Achieving our operational excellence strategy will translate into a world-class employee experience, enhance client relationship and satisfaction, and will provide WSP with the financial capacity to continue to invest in our strategic pillar, ultimately creating value for all stakeholders.
Turning to our financial ambition now, where we will tie everything together to show the anticipated financial impact of our strategy. Before we do that, let's first review the results of our last strategic cycle. We're very proud to have achieved each of our financial targets set out in our 2019 to 2021 strategic plan, especially in the context of the unprecedented conditions we went through. Looking at this scorecard, there are a few key takeaways. First, we grew our platform significantly over the last three years by more than a third, going from net revenues of CAD 6 billion in 2018 to more than CAD 8 billion today.
Second, we increased our adjusted EBITDA margin by 220 basis points to 16.8%. This increase is attributable to ongoing effort to optimize all aspects of our operations and to the successful contribution of our acquisitions. Third, thanks to our strong cash flow generation, we succeeded in deleveraging our balance sheet significantly while completing 17 accretive acquisitions, including Golder, our largest acquisition ever in terms of cash outlay. Looking back at the last two strategic cycles, our ability to generate significant growth and continued margin expansion is apparent.
In the last six years, we grew our net revenue at a CAGR of 8% while increasing our adjusted EBITDA at a CAGR of 12%, resulting in margin expansion by 300 basis points. It's also worth pointing out the growth of our backlog, standing at a record high level of CAD 10.4 billion at the end of 2021, which bodes very well for the future. Now turning to our bold 2024 ambition. First off, we expect to be a CAD 10 billion+ business by the end of 2024. This considers accelerated organic growth of over 5% annually on average. It also assumes that we will be successful at delivering disciplined acquisition growth.
In terms of profitability, we expect our adjusted EBITDA margin to range between 17.5% and 18.5%. Cash management will continue to be a focus, and we expect that our free cash flow will annually exceed our net earnings. We anticipate that investment in digital tools, including our new ERP, will range between CAD 150 million and CAD 200 million over the course of the next three years. All in all, by 2024, we expect our net revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EPS to increase by 30%, 40%, and 50% respectively.
As we previously outlined, we are uniquely positioned to benefit from current market trends. We have a strong leadership position in our three core sectors, and we intend to expand our presence in select growth areas such as water, power and renewable energy, and consulting and digital advisory services. Across our sectors and region, proposal activity remains robust. We have experienced double-digit organic growth in our backlog in 2021, highlighting an acceleration in the level of activity and our continued ability to win in the marketplace and remain relevant to our clients.
Now turning to profitability. As we've covered during the detailed discussion on our core pillars, there are a number of drivers we plan to employ to optimize our performance. For example, a simplification push is aimed at freeing up our people's time, allowing them to focus on value-added activities. Even a minor improvement in utilization resulting from this initiative would have a meaningful impact on adjusted EBITDA along with improved employee experience.
We are finishing our 2019 to 2021 strategic cycle and embarking on the next phase of our journey with a very strong balance sheet, with a net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio standing at 0.6x. We intend to maintain our strong focus on cash flow metrics, and we anticipate generating cumulative free cash flow in excess of CAD 2 billion between 2022 and 2024. Looking forward, M&A remains the priority of our capital allocation strategy.
We anticipate our net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio to range between 1x and 2 x, although we will maintain a flexible approach, and our leverage could temporarily fall outside of our target range to allow us to capture growth opportunities while maintaining an investment-grade profile. While we will remain a disciplined acquirer, our ability to generate cash, coupled with our strong backlog, our current leverage, and available short-term capital resources, positions us very well to capture opportunities.
As we look at the journey ahead, we have a clear strategic action plan for the next three years on our way to achieve our long-term vision of doubling in size and delivering 20%+ adjusted EBITDA margin. We're extremely proud to have successfully achieved all the financial objective set out for our 2019 to 2021 strategic cycle. This successful track record has given us the confidence to aim higher. We have grown at a constant and rapid pace, thanks to a well-balanced combination of acquisition and organic growth.
Our history of margin expansion and responsible cash management lends credibility to our new financial ambitions and allow us to kick off this strategic cycle from a position of strength. We are confident that our goals are within reach. This concludes the first part of the Investor Day, and we will now begin our first Q&A session.
I see that we have now reached. I'm just. Hmm? We have our first question from Ian from Stifel GMP. Hello, Ian. Given the volatile, uncertain macro backdrop, how are you thinking about M&A over the guidance period? I'm actually thinking, and I've said that before in the past and in past quarters and previous years, that when there is volatility or uncertainty or actually opportunities in the market, it provides actually, you know, a land of opportunities for WSP. I think it's always been the case, and we're gonna continue to do so. We have been opportunistic in the past.
If I look back at WSP in 2012, this was in the middle of you know, a recession, a crisis, and despite that, you saw two firms coming together during that year, GENIVAR and WSP, in times that were quite challenging. I think that we will be in this position again this time around. Despite you know, a lot of volatility in the market, I do see a great pipeline of targets in the coming years, and we should be able to take advantage of that. The next question is from RBC, Sabahat Khan. What do you mean by an equitable and inclusive world? Does this go beyond carbon? I will turn to André-Martin Bouchard perhaps to answer this question.
Sure, Alex. Thank you, Sabah, for the question. I would first say that, well, first of all, we've covered how important inclusion and diversity is to WSP. Megan covered it. I covered it as well. From our own house perspective, I think we have a solid plan to make sure that we are as equitable and inclusive as possible, and we are making the progress we need to be making. Most importantly, to your question, Sabah, on if this goes beyond carbon, of course, it goes beyond carbon. Of course, carbon and building more resilient communities helps, you know, building a more equitable and inclusive world.
The work we do for clients actually around, you know, cleaning up lands and providing those opportunities to either bring it back to biodiversity, to natural environment, or actually building new communities, providing access to lodging to people will certainly also be one element that WSP can significantly contribute.
Another example is how we design infrastructure, you know, whether it's transit, rail or highways that connects people better so that they can, you know, go out to work and go back home at night safely, that everyone has access to these infrastructure that we are building, designing and creating for our clients. There are many ways I think that we can actually contribute to building a more equitable and inclusive world, and it's much more than just carbon, for sure.
Thank you, André-Martin Bouchard. The next question from Troy, Laurentian Bank Securities. Cash is king. What makes WSP so unique in its ability to convert consistently higher net income into free cash flow? Well, before I turn to Alain to answer this question, obviously, I'm not sure if we are unique. What I can say is that you are right, Troy, in saying that cash is king at WSP. That's the single most important metrics. Cash conversion not only brings cash to the organization, but more importantly, this is, for me, the biggest sign that our clients are satisfied with the work that we are providing.
If we are able to reduce the time between cash invoicing or invoicing and cash collection, I'm sorry, that means that our clients are increasingly happy with the work that we are delivering, and that's why cash is king at WSP. Perhaps, Alain, you'd like to complement the answer.
Thanks, Troy, for the question. Cash is king certainly, relates to our philosophy as well. You know, we're absolutely proud of our performance. CAD 1.8 billion of cash collection in the last three years, 175% conversion of our net earnings. This is, you know, over and above all the rigor and focus that we put on cash management day in and day out. I think to Alexandre's point, that goes and speaks loudly to the work of the collective WSP. It's the work we do with our client, and I could only echo what Alexandre said. No magic here. Focus on your client, deliver on your project, make sure the clients are happy, cash will follow, and that's what we experience now.
Thank you, Alain. The next question again from Ian Gillies at Stifel GMP. Is there any potential for capital recycling, moreover, selling businesses that are considered weak performers within the WSP platform and redeploying that capital into more profitable businesses? This is a great question, Ian. This is something that we do all the time in the background. Something that we've done consistently in the past and will continue to do in the future. I wouldn't want our investors to expect a major sell-off of some of our large platform. At the moment, we are extremely pleased with the operations that we have.
That doesn't mean that we are not going to fine-tune our platform to make it more profitable. We'll make sure that we redeploy that capital and recycle that capital into more profitable endeavors. In that regard, this is a real possibility. The next question is from Jacob Bout at CIBC. Hello, Jacob. M&A, are there enough attractive pure-play engineers, and how is the pipeline? The answer is absolutely yes, Jacob. If you just take in the U.S., there are in excess of 2,000 you know, pure-play engineering firms. Of course, they're not all larger size firms.
There are some mid-size firms, very small size firms. But I am confident over the next three years that we are going to be in a position to find firms that will be in the position to join our platform. It's not just about pure-play engineering firms. If you look at Golder, this is an example of firms that brought adjacent services to our service offering, especially in the Earth and Environment sector. I'm confident that in the pure-play engineering sector, in addition to other sectors where we operate, we are going to find firms that are accretive to our investors, but also accretive to our platforms, our people, and our clients.
The next question from Benoit Poirier at Desjardins. Considering that success that you had with the previous strategic plan to increase your exposure to environmental services, is there a specific sub-segment that we should be monitoring closely for growth through 2024? I suspect, Benoit, you are talking about subsectors in the Earth and Environment sector. Perhaps, André-Martin , you may wanna talk about the advisory services that we are providing in the C-suite.
Absolutely, Alex. Thank you. Benoit, for sure, we are seeing increasing demand from an ESG advisory services perspective, and we are going to be working hard at growing this significantly over the next cycle. Water would be another big priority for us. We think that we can do more, and we can grow significantly in the water space. Maybe also a quick word on the work we do for the mining clients.
We help mining clients across the world with their challenges, you know, managing their environmental footprint, their permitting and social acceptability. We are a key partner to the mining industry, and certainly we will remain as mining is critical to the green transition of the world. We wanna be a partner to those clients in the coming years.
Thank you, André-Martin . The next one from RBC again. Do you expect your regional mix to shift within OECD countries to change materially by year-end 2024? The answer is not really. I think we've if you look at our major operational hubs, those represent essentially 90% of our profit, and they are located in OECD countries. Ninety percent of our profit is located mostly in OECD countries. We are going to look to keep this balance within the organization.
However, you know, I could foresee, given the sheer size of the North American market, that come the end of 2024, we have as a proportion of total net revenue, a slight increase to our North American split. It's just natural given, as I said, the size of the engineering sector in North America. The next question's 20% long-term EBITDA margin from Jacob, again from CIBC. 20% long-term EBITDA margin guidance, is that a five-year or ten-year goal? How do you accomplish this? I'd love to have a crystal ball, Jacob. It's hard for me to predict when we are going to get there.
I mentioned it in my earlier comment that we don't know exactly when we are going to get there. One thing I can assure you is that we have every confidence and every intention to get there. It could happen sooner than we think if we were to complete a transformational acquisition where we could have so much synergistic benefits both on the revenue side and the cost synergy side that we could increase our margins above 20%. It could take longer should we choose to do smaller tuck-ins for a period of time.
It could come also in the medium term should we decide to do mid-size acquisitions, all that with a very consistent organic growth strategy. You know, I definitely hope that this is going to be achieved way before our 10-year mark, but it's going to be extremely hard for me, Jacob, to predict exactly when. The next question, again from RBC, Sabahat. You highlighted a mix shift away from T&I and P&B. Any end markets are particularly focused on that we are focused on? Perhaps this is the right question to bring a nuance to what you just asked.
The goal here is not to reduce, you know, the fee revenues that we are generating in Property and Buildings and T&I. To the contrary, in the next three years, we are going to increase our exposure in Property and Buildings, and we are going to increase our exposure to T&I. What I am saying is that over the next three years, we are going to continue to diversify our platform in other sectors. Earlier on in my commentary, I talked about power, renewable energies, water. These are just a number of sectors that we could continue to grow aggressively in the years to come. Do not be mistaken, our core sectors are here to stay. We're gonna continue to invest and grow those sectors in the next three years.
Another question from Michael Tupholme at TD Securities. Can you discuss the extent to which the overall margin profile of the consulting and strategic advisory services you provide differs from the margin profile of your engineering and design services offering? I'm sorry. The straight answer is that we have not expanded our horizon into consulting and strategic advisory in the last plan, Michael, because we thought that we could do better margin in that sector versus engineering and design. We will continue to capitalize in our engineering and design sector.
We are actually seeing an increase in our margin profile in engineering and design. You have seen in the last plan, we have been able to increase our margin profile. That's that piece of the business represent today still 55%-60% of our top line. This consulting piece is bringing us closer to our clients. In the years to come, we are going to continue to invest and grow our consulting and strategic advisory services because we're gonna be there at the beginning with our client all the way down to making sure that we make those ideas concrete and provide the detailed design and solutions to complex problems.
I would say that the margin profile is very similar. Having said all that, just as a piece of information, this year, our Earth & Environment sector has generated close to or around 20% EBITDA margin. It's been a very good year for the Earth & Environment sector. The next question from Choi Sun at LBS. I don't know if you can bring the question up, that would be helpful on the screen 'cause I can't see the question. When we think about the potential growth towards the 2024 ambition, I think the top line targets impute a roughly 15,000-20,000 head count addition.
Understanding the timing is hard to predict, but given your relative size in your view, would you prefer to achieve that through one or two large acquisitions versus many smaller deals? We don't have a preference. We intend in the years to come, necessarily in the next two years, to continue to do larger, medium-sized and smaller sized acquisitions because they all bring value. Smaller sized acquisitions oftentimes will bring specialty services to our engineering services, and I think that this is as important as providing, you know, a country with the platform through to which we can grow upon.
I think we are going to continue to be on the watch for the large acquisition, the medium-sized acquisition, and the smaller sized deals. If we are in a position to pull the trigger, size is not what will matter. We'll be agnostic to size. It's how it will complement our platform that will really matter. I think this was the end of our first Q&A period. We've reached, you know, the end of the allotted time for questions. We'll now proceed with a quick five-minute break, and we'll see you in a bit.
Thank you everyone. Welcome back from the break. We will now turn to the second half of our Investor Day, where our regional leaders will provide a geographic focus, starting with Canada. To you, Marie-Claude.
Good morning. My name is Marie-Claude Dumas. I'm the Chief Executive Officer for the Canadian region. WSP Canada has a presence in 91 cities across the country with a workforce of 9,500 employees, 36% of them being women. 39% of our business is generated through our earth and environment sector, followed by transportation and infrastructure at 33%, property and buildings at 18%, and industry and energy at 10%. As of December 31, 2021, we have a healthy backlog of CAD 1.8 billion over 12 months with a 77% annual growth rate.
Our clients come from the public sector at a rate of 65%, while 35% of them are private. With the digitization of our industry, we are and will continue to see undeniable changes in the way our people perform their everyday work. The vision for the Canada region starts with our people, who are the driving force behind our capacity to constantly innovate and deliver Future Ready solutions to our clients. Our competitive advantage lies in our ability to attract and retain talent. We want to become the employer of the future today.
A place where engineers, designers, planners, scientists, and other talented team members will thrive and remain their true selves. In short, the digitization of our work will drastically transform the type of work done by our teams. Leveraging the power of digitization and technology will give us an incredible opportunity to drive efficiency. It will give engineers and scientists the opportunity to focus on the big picture, realize more projects, and add value to our clients, even when shortages in the labor market remain a major challenge.
The vision for Canada stands on our four foundational elements. Health and safety. Our goal is to ensure that our activities result in zero long-term harm to health for employees, partners, and members of the public. Inclusion and diversity. We will continue to make sure women and underrepresented groups feel they are encouraged to be their true selves and given outstanding professional development opportunities. We value differences in our employees and aim to continue building diversified teams to foster innovation.
Ethics and integrity. We are committed to upholding the highest standards in all our business activities. Our culture supports and encourages employees to speak up. Finally, sustainability is at the core of all of our activities and is reflected both in our internal targets for carbon reduction and in the thoughtful Future Ready solutions that we offer to clients to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Federal and local governments in Canada continue to invest heavily into infrastructure with additional commitments from the COP26 Climate Conference expected to inject more than CAD 50 billion a year.
Private equity investments continue to gravitate towards ethical and sustainable operations. With the acquisition of Golder, we are well-positioned to benefit from this market focus on resilience and sustainable development. Across all markets in Canada, professional labor shortages continue to be a major trend. Our approach to digitization will be a major asset for WSP, as it will shift the work of our technical teams toward bigger picture thinking and permit more efficient use of our talent.
One of our ongoing flagship project is the Canadian Parliament building, the Centre Block Rehabilitation Project for the Canadian government. WSP is leading the design of the expansion, rehabilitation, and conservation of Centre Block. We work to address concerns regarding seismic stabilization of the building structures, as well as the challenges posed in upgrading electrical, mechanical, and communications infrastructure in a delicate heritage building.
To help address these challenges, the design for this multi-year program is executed fully in a BIM environment with content integrated across disciplines. This allows advanced modeling, design option visualizations, and the integration of asset management for this heritage building. The Golder acquisition positions WSP Canada not only as the earth and environment leader, but also as a leading player in the engineering consulting industry in Canada.
We will continue to capitalize on our leading market positions in earth and environment, rail and transit, as well as federal buildings in the national capital region. The Golder acquisition offers many additional cross-selling opportunities with existing clients. WSP can rely on its vast expertise to answer the needs of our blending markets. We are extremely well-positioned to lead the way in climate change advisory services, waste-to-energy, district energy, data centers, automation and digital manufacturing, critical infrastructure cyber security, and green building renewals.
We are also excited to work with the Canada Infrastructure Bank for projects for indigenous communities across Canada. We are enhancing our focus on project delivery excellence to become our clients' trusted advisor of choice, known for providing quality work efficiently, safely, and ethically. We are also active participants in driving the trend towards collaborative delivery models in Canada. We can draw on our global expertise in these delivery models to support our Canadian clients and reshape the project landscape.
There's no better example of this commitment than the Union Station Enhancement Project in Toronto, the first alliance contract model for rail and transit in Canada. Working with our alliance partners, we have started the project alliance agreement phase, which is the delivery phase of the project for all works, including detailed design, construction, handover, and commissioning. Digital twins have the potential to deliver on many of the great challenges we face today, including urbanization, population growth, climate change, escalating infrastructure costs, and sustainable development.
Digital twins can improve our designs and the advice we give to our clients, yet challenges remain. Sharing data among project stakeholders is an important change in our industry, as digital knowledge, practices, and culture are not yet converging across the built environment. We are adopting more of an ecosystem approach to digital twins and working with partners who can integrate not just the various systems, but the underlying design, build, and operate expertise that informs development and maximizes value.
Digital twins have the potential to disrupt markets, and once we address the barriers of data exchanges, governance, and compatibility, we expect the results to be profound. The vision is to create a single source of truth for an asset where all the data can be accessed and viewed throughout the design-build-operate life cycle, as a digital twin is about using an ecosystem of technologies that work together and connect.
Digital twins help teams understand the total cost of projects during all phases and allow to compare different scenarios to optimize the capital and operational costs as well as the environmental and social impacts. Our WSP Canada team recognizes the valuable opportunities that come with collaborating with our team members around the world. The new Union Station Enhancement Project, which I mentioned just a few minutes ago, is a perfect example of how global expertise within WSP has helped us secure work here in Canada.
Recognizing the strong work WSP has done on alliance contracting in other regions such as Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K., we were able to demonstrate our capabilities in the successful execution of these types of contracts to clients. Beyond the Union Station project, we recognize there will be additional opportunities to capture work through the utilization of our internal network. Climate change, waste-to-energy, district energy, security and defense, and flood resilience are just a few of the areas where we know we can demonstrate our knowledge and help provide strong solutions for our clients, thanks to global expertise we have here at WSP.
Our company continues to be recognized as a key player in the industry landscape, delivering some of the largest, most complex and transformative projects in the country. In early 2022, WSP Canada was named as one of 18 companies receiving platinum status in the ReNew Canada Top 100 Projects report, ranking the 100 largest public sector infrastructure projects being developed in Canada. The WSP Golder team was featured for our involvement in 67 of the 100 projects, 20 more than our closest competitor, which also highlights the breadth of our expertise.
In 2021, our teams across Canada were recognized for several outstanding work on several projects, taking home awards from multiple provincial and national bodies. Among the organizations that gave awards to WSP Canada for our work were ACEC across Canada, Association des firmes de génie-conseil - Québec, Canadian Brownfields Network, and Cecobois, just to name a few.
The vision for the Canada region starts with our people, who are the driving force behind our capacity to constantly innovate. The addition of our Golder colleagues has expanded our breadth and depth of expertise to deliver innovative, future-ready solutions to our clients and the communities in which we live and work. Thank you. I will now pass it to Lou.
Thank you, Marie-Claude. Good morning. My name is Lou Cornell. I'm the Chief Executive Officer for the U.S. region. In the U.S., we are a leader in transportation, buildings, and the environment. We have a very diverse set of clients with 68% of revenues generated from government and 32% from commercial clients. In 2021, we grew our backlog organically and through acquisition. Our total backlog currently is at record levels. The development and retention of our people is the critical success factor to realizing the growth potential of our strong backlog.
We have made strides in improving the diversity of our leadership and attracting a diverse workforce. We believe when we take care of our people and we take care of the culture, our people will in turn take care of our clients. WSP offers a unique value proposition to clients in the United States. Our versatile interdisciplinary teams turn challenges into end-to-end solutions. Our culture, which is built on empowering and supporting each other, truly sets us apart. We have consistently strengthened the business.
EBITDA has doubled since 2018, exceeding CAD 500 million in 2021. Our adjusted EBITDA margin is up seven points since 2017 due to market diversification, cost control, and improved delivery. Staffing levels are up 70% since the beginning of 2018. Acquisitions have expanded our client base and broadened our expertise while strengthening our leadership positions in environment and in buildings. We are the consultant of choice in vital submarkets, including healthcare, mining, tunnels, and underground energy storage.
We have a rising profile as an industry leader in climate, resilience, and sustainability, issues that are important for every client. With our collaborative and future-focused approach and a more diversified platform, we aim to be the top consultancy in the United States. This will enable us to deliver on our shared purpose of creating a more sustainable, equitable, and connected world. Our growth strategies involve all business lines. We will make our communities more livable for all by being the U.S.'s leading consultant in all transportation submarkets.
We will grow our position in drinking water, renewable energy, and other markets that are important to the planet's future. We will elevate our position as a provider of technical services and program management to federal clients and grow our portfolio of emergency management services. We will build on our position as an environmental consultant for industrial, commercial, and resource clients by offering new services, an opportunity made possible by our recent acquisitions.
We will continue to grow our portfolio in healthcare, mission-critical, and other complex building sectors where we can compete on the strength of our services versus low fee. We will expand our management consulting, climate advisory, and digital consulting capabilities, strengthening our position as a trusted advisor. As our industry becomes more data reliant, excellence in digital consulting and digital delivery will be a key differentiator. We will invest to achieve greater scale in fast-growing geographic markets, particularly in the South and in the West.
These strategies will help us diversify our expertise and achieve our growth targets for the 2022-2024 plan period. We will support these growth ambitions by providing the best employee experience, nurturing our culture that helps us attract, develop, and retain the best talent to deliver larger client programs. We will continue to improve how we work and how we deliver for our clients. The $1.2 trillion US dollar, which is equivalent to CAD 1.5 trillion, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law approved in 2021 will increase funding across all end markets.
The new federal funding will be dispersed to clients over several years. Funding rules are now starting to be established so funds can be released into the pipeline, and we expect to see that impact starting in Q3 or Q4 of 2022. With our pre-existing contract capacity, delivery track record, and deep client relationships, we are well-positioned to support clients as our programs accelerate. In addition to our technical expertise in markets seeing increased funding, we also assist our clients secure funding for their programs.
To date, we have helped secure nearly $31 billion in state and federal grants and loans for more than 140 infrastructure projects nationwide. Economic co-growth in the U.S. is currently strong. We see renewed momentum in areas that were slowed during the pandemic. For instance, the New York market is bouncing back in some areas. We have capitalized on this by capturing three major wins recently with the New York MTA, and we see many more opportunities coming.
We are also seeing private investment strengthening in core parts of our business, especially related to energy transition, resilience, and technology advancements. We are well-positioned to capitalize on the market's key growth factors. For example, as a national leader in rail and transit, we will see opportunities due to the much larger federal investment in passenger rail. As the leading engineer to the healthcare market, we will capitalize on the demographic trends, capacity constraints, and technology evolution affecting investment at hospitals.
With the acquisition of kW Mission Critical Engineering, we are well-positioned for continued success in the data center market. Many of our business lines are supporting clients as they modify their operations and facilities to align with their ESG and decarbonization objectives. We are the only firm in the U.S. offering complete lifecycle solutions in sustainability, climate adaptation, climate mitigation, and disaster response. Our organizational model supports strategy and allows us to maximize services being offered to all clients supporting faster organic growth.
Our regions drive local client relationships and delivery, while our national business lines lead market strategy, provide a robust industry presence, and sustain high-end technical expertise that the regions leverage for growth . While we continuously seek ways to improve our organization to respond to our client needs, we have benefited significantly from the organization we implemented in 2021.
For example, our integrated approach strengthens our position against firms with larger power groups for the pursuit of the $2 billion Champlain Hudson Power Express program, a 300-mile power cable project linking Montreal to New York City. Our federal and PMCM teams combined to win a large program management mandate for the United States Postal Service nationwide, and numerous business lines are collaborating with the regions on zero-emission and fleet electrification opportunities for a diverse set of local, state and federal clients.
The commercial share of our portfolio is rising. The diversity of our client base lowers our risk for any single business cycle or market trend and increases our ability to capitalize on opportunities. We have framework agreements with many top companies across a wide range of industries, and our account leaders and technical teams collaborate across the entire WSP platform to serve these clients. We work with government clients in every business line and expect to see stronger programs in the coming years. We see opportunity to grow even with our longtime clients.
For L.A. Metro, where we are known for our planning and transit work, we have recently added highway final design services for a complex project in Southern California. We are also delivering Amtrak's largest rail and tunnel and station projects. Their new program, funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will be several times larger than any prior capital program, providing the opportunity to expand the range of services we offer.
Whether it is in water, healthcare, mining or power, we see tremendous opportunity to partner with our clients to design sustainable communities and resilient environments that create an equitable future for everyone. I'd like to tell you about a few major projects that demonstrate this. First is the BART Link21 Second Transbay Crossing. We designed the initial crossing of the San Francisco Bay in the 1960s, and now we are helping to plan and design the rail system that will again transform the region. Our Future Ready approach was instrumental in our pursuit.
We are helping the client develop solutions to improve regional connectivity by incorporating digital innovation, transitioning to a resilient low carbon future, and creating flexible long-term solutions. We've also been engaged by the Texas General Land Office, a new client, to develop and implement a $4 billion statewide program of resilient infrastructure and climate mitigation projects. This pursuit perfectly exemplifies the power of our integrated approach as it combined our expertise in water, transportation, buildings, power, resilience and sustainability.
Lastly, we are very proud to be a key design partner for the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts, the first commercial scale offshore wind project in the United States. There are many offshore wind projects in the pipeline. This project provides the opportunity to build on WSP's strong track record in offshore wind in Europe, and it also strengthens our technical consulting and support services for developers in planning, implementing and operating renewable energy projects. Thank you very much. I'll now pass it on to Anna Lena.
Good morning. I'm Anna-Lena Öberg-Högsta , Chief Executive Officer for WSP in the Nordic region. WSP in the Nordic region have weathered the years of the pandemic well and have stayed stable with the promising start of 2022. During the past years, we have integrated several acquisitions, and while doing so, taking the opportunity to reflect on our operational structure and excellence to strongly position ourselves to serve both current and new clients with a high level of efficiency and quality. We have managed our client relationships well and increased the backlog across our core markets.
Our biggest challenge is retention and talent recruitment. To ensure the growth of our business, leveraging our global reach is more important than ever. Our ambition across the Nordics is to continue to drive growth by prioritizing our core markets and our greatest strengths and talents. Given the size of the Nordic entities, we believe that the largest growth opportunities sit outside of Sweden. Our focus is clear.
We aim to become the leading technical professional service firm in the Nordic within the built environment, and to be the preferred advisory partner and management services consultant supporting our clients in their green transition and digital transformation. The focus for today will be on the Swedish market, followed by a brief overview of our other countries. The pandemic has emphasized the focus on climate, sustainable solution and digitalization with a high demand for increased flexibility and solutions to complex issues.
Our Swedish operation have therefore strengthened its position in the market by taking the opportunity to simplify its organization into four sectors, supported by three focused business areas. This to meet the new market and client requirements and enabling growth. The Swedish operation is now more than 4,000 people strong, with 30 locations well positioned across Sweden to service our clients. Our business in Sweden have benefited from the well-structured and stable long-term public sector spending.
Today, 53% of our revenue come from major project, public projects such as rail links between large cities, the expansion of the Stockholm Metro, together with planning and development of sustainable city concepts, as well as several specialized projects within the property and building sector, leveraging our capabilities in digital. An example of this work is the Queen Silvia Children's Hospital. This is one of the world's most eminent children's hospital and designed to meet the need of children, young people, and close relatives for a comfortable, safe, secure, and healing environment.
It includes housing, private patient rooms, hybrid rooms, operating theaters, wards, and rehabilitation facilities. WSP was responsible for the BIM strategy to create a better healthcare environment for society's smallest patients. There are over 400 systems to create a high-tech but home-like environment with uninterrupted power supply, where starry skies could change to precision lighting, and where patients can move from controlled climate environments to advanced ventilation technology areas. All is supported by high energy efficiency, creating a flexible, caring environment and workplace.
The project has shown that BIM is the future to optimize and simplify design in all aspects. Digitizing all engineering processes enables a sustainable and robust design and contracting process, creating efficiency and cost savings. We are ranked the top three against our main competitors and are the only company in the market with a true global footprint. We are top tier in environmental, healthcare, sustainable city planning, rail, and tunneling. We are differentiating ourselves by our services in project management and strategic advisory.
We have a strong client program with the top 10 clients generating close to 50% of our annual revenue. Given the nature of our business, our top-tier clients are predominantly from the public sector in the built environment, which is shown here. These clients, together with private clients in the energy, resource, and industry sector, represents the areas where we foresee the largest growth potential in the coming three years. Our client program includes continuous feedback, and we are proud to enjoy improvement year on year.
Our people and clients are at the core of everything we do, and hence, also the foundation of our strategy. As already mentioned, WSP is uniquely positioned in the Nordics, being the only company with a global footprint. We will attract and retain key talents through positioning our global innovative knowhow culture, where skills are developed, where our people influence, and where we are providing a diversified, inclusive, and flexible way of working with a first-class technological work environment.
Given our top-tier position in our core markets, a major part of our strategic growth plan is to focus our revenue growth opportunities within existing markets and clients, winning more complex and multidisciplinary projects, leveraging our Nordic and global collaboration. We aspire to use our strategic advisory services to establish ourselves as the preferred provider for green and digital transition. In addition, using our strong earth and environmental capabilities will be the stepping stone to larger market share in energy, resource, and industry.
I would like to highlight an example of renewable energy-related project in the Nordics. The wind farms in Kattegat are planned to be Northern Europe's largest wind farms. For this project, we have been commissioned to lead public consultation and provide environmental strategic advice for the permitting process, including environmental impact assessment, considering specialized investigation on marine biology, as well as applications for a highly environmentally protected area. In addition, WSP are to provide advice on technical design on offshore wind farms and related export cables.
This project further demonstrates our capabilities of leveraging our position in earth and environment to access new markets. Our business in Denmark has successfully grown over the past years and is close to 470 people in three main locations. We consider ourselves top tier in the earth and environment market and very well positioned in our other core markets. Our top client accounts are a mixture of public clients, such as the City of Copenhagen and various municipalities, as well as private clients within the real estate, industry, and energy sector.
The Danish market provides an opportunity to grow in the core markets, leveraging specialist services, but we also have an opportunity to grow within strategic advisory services and project management through collaboration across our region. Now moving on to Finland, the market economy has remained relatively stable, mainly thanks to larger public spending. Today, we have over 700 people in 11 locations. We consider ourselves well-positioned in the transport and infrastructure and property and buildings sector.
With the Golder acquisition, WSP in Finland is considered to be among top tier in the Earth and Environment. Our top clients are a mixture of public clients, such as the largest cities, governmental real estate bodies, national transportation agency, as well as private clients within the industry. Our first strategic priority is to continue to strengthen and grow our local country presence within the core sectors and leverage our region's technical expertise and private client relationships.
As for the Norwegian market, it has been strong and remains so during the past two years, with both public and private investments in the built environment. Today, we are close to 550 people in seven locations, well-distributed to meet our client demand. We consider ourselves well-positioned in property and building, foremost through our project management and advisory services. The Norwegian business displays a great opportunity for development, and our strategic priority is therefore to continue to strengthen and diversify our core business and client base while growing our local country presence and add capabilities through Nordic and global collaboration.
The Nordic countries are well-known globally for their performance and leadership within sustainability and innovation. This is critical to meet the evolving needs of our clients and partners, in addition to attract and retain the best people. We therefore have focused to leverage our Future Ready program with, first, Growth Spark, a tailor-made program in WSP which supports external startups. It also allows our people to be innovative and entrepreneurial, exchanging those innovations across WSP globally and fostering our people's ingenuity.
Second, a reverse mentoring program where young specialists are providing feedback to the company's senior management on specific assignments within sustainability. Finally, the Nordic Task Force, which consists of approximately 20 young professionals working on strategically selected topics important to WSP's success, and also important for the participants to thrive and develop to become our future leaders. This year's program is devoted to support our strategic cycle with the critical elements of embedding a strong, innovative, and creative culture through actionable initiatives.
We have also invested time in connecting with our people during these years of the pandemic, using different means of media, all to engage, retain, and develop our people, and further diversify our business in an easy, accessible, modern digital format. Thank you. I will now pass it to Mark.
Thank you, Anna-Lena Öberg-Högsta. Good morning. I'm Mark Naysmith, the Chief Executive Officer for the United Kingdom and Regional CEO overseeing Central Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. With the U.K. representing circa 60% of my region and 40% being equally split between Central Europe and the Middle East, I'm going to dedicate most of my presentation today to the U.K., followed by a brief overview of Central Europe and the Middle East. I'm pleased to report that all of my region had a really good 2021, and we've had a really good start to 2022.
The common factor across all geographies is that backlog is relatively strong, and we have a big focus on retention and recruitment of talent to realize our growth ambitions. Our ambition across the region is to continue to increase our market share to become the most diverse, progressive, and sustainable top-tier consultancy in our end markets. Maturity across the various countries differs, which creates huge opportunity, and I'll touch on that throughout my presentation. Starting with the U.K., we've witnessed a really good recovery from the early pandemic lockdown of 2020.
Since late 2020 and throughout 2021, we've gone from strength to strength across all of our markets. We now plan to capitalize on this success for future growth. Not only have we benefited from ongoing public sector infrastructure spend, supporting major projects such as High Speed 2 rail, we've also bounced back in the private sector, which experienced a slowdown in previous years due to the uncertainty relating to Brexit. The Brexit agreements are now pretty much in place, and we're witnessing much greater confidence in the private sector development market.
We're also well-placed to support the U.K. government's National Infrastructure Plan, which brings together the government's plans for economic infrastructure over the next 10 years, and I'll talk more about that shortly. In addition, recent acquisitive integrations, namely Golder and Indigo Planning, are now complete, both of which have been a great success and have added to our talent and client base. Looking at the U.K. operations, we currently have a head count of around 7,300 employees with a good geographical spread in 25 locations to service both local and national clients.
Public sector represents 61% of our revenue, with 39% from the private sector. By way of end markets, 55% of our business is in transport and infrastructure, 24% in property and buildings, 11% in earth and environment, and 10% in industry and energy. We focus a lot on our inclusion and diversity strategy. In 2021, I'm pleased to say we won the Association for Consultancy and Engineering in-Industry Award for the most inclusive employer of the year.
Having impressed judges with our strategy, which highlighted operational actions to support both short and longer term views around I&D. 31% of our employees are female across the business, with our annual female graduate intake is now in excess of 40%, and that's something that we're very pleased about. We're ranked in the top three against the U.K. competitors. However, we are a more diverse business in our service offering greater diversity of skills and talent with a much broader end market split.
We consider ourselves top tier in property, environmental, rail, highways, energy, and planning, with 35% of our revenue coming from advisory services and 65% from related design activity. We work across the U.K. very collaboratively on a number of multidisciplinary projects and have a very strong alliance with our Middle East and South-Central European businesses in particular. We enjoy a mature client program with 50 of our platinum and gold accounts generating circa 67% of our revenue last year.
Given the nature and scale of our projects, our top 10 clients by revenue are predominantly public sector in transportation and infrastructure. Our client program, which includes feedback on a quarterly basis and Net Promoter Scores, have increased year on year, which we've really enjoyed. Our strong client program collaboration and relationships are positioned as well to understand our clients' strategies and future development aspirations.
Two projects that I would like to present to you today are platinum accounts in transport and infrastructure and property and buildings, where we not only provide engineering and environmental design services, but also advisory and to support our clients in helping them to realize their net zero and Future Ready agendas. The first project I'd like to refer to is High Speed 2 Rail. WSP has been one of the leading suppliers of professional design and planning services to High Speed 2 since the project began in 2012. The project is broken down into two phases.
Phase I is 192 km of new High Speed 2 rail line connecting London to Birmingham, and that's due to be complete by 2031. The second phase is another 348 km of line extensions to Leeds and Manchester, due to be complete by 2040. WSP services include design, planning services for rail systems, stations, civil engineering, highways, and environmental. WSP is currently engaged as designers on 3 of the 4 phase I stations in London Euston, Old Oak Common, which is west of London, and in Birmingham, and recently provided key support to the phase II- B Crewe to Manchester hybrid bill submission to secure the government's powers to build the next extension.
Looking forward, the U.K. National Infrastructure Plan brings together the government's plans for economic infrastructure over the next 10 years. The latest plan set out in 2021 was the government's commitment to invest CAD 1,070 billion by 2031, of which 60% is already in the pipeline. Of this, a fairer, faster, greener emphasis on leveling up and net zero has been committed to, which equates to CAD 330 billion invested by 2025. Given WSP's top-tier position, we are well-positioned to support the government on its national infrastructure delivery plan.
In addition, the U.K. is only one of two countries to legislate on net zero to date. At WSP, we're taking a leading position supporting our clients with their net zero aspirations. A good example of WSP's working with government is on the National Highways Net Zero strategy project. The objective of this project is to complete the strategy for National Highways to decarbonize their entire road network by 2035. WSP is lead advisor to National Highways in developing and implementing their plan to net zero.
The project scope covers corporate emissions from maintenance and construction, and road user emissions, which is around 8% of the U.K.'s greenhouse gases. The plan draws on WSP's expertise in environmental science, management consultancy, and engineering expertise from across a number of end markets to support National Highways aspirations. This will be the most ambitious net-zero strategy of any infrastructure organization in the U.K.
In this next strategic cycle, we aim to continue to gain market share in establishing markets, and our aspiration to grow advisory services revenue from 35% - 40% of our total revenue over the next three years, which will not only bring revenue growth, but it'll also bring margin enhancement. This will come from growth in services such as digital, net zero and data analytics advisory. We have already taken a market leading position in net zero supporting clients to and we've pledged to cut the carbon in our design by 50% by 2030.
Given our top-tier position in our core markets, a large part of our strategic growth plan will focus on revenue growth opportunities with existing clients, where we can secure even more multidisciplinary commissions. Some key areas of growth in this next strategic cycle will include cross-selling multidisciplinary services to local and national government clients, where traditionally we have provided only transportation infrastructure services, growing a presence in the water industry from a tier 2 to a tier 1 position, increasing Property and Buildings revenue in the public sector, where again, traditionally, we've been stronger in the private sector.
We also plan to develop our presence in the defense sector and transition our energy business from fossil fuels into renewables such as offshore wind and hydrogen. Then turning to our people, we are continuing to grow and successfully recruit new talent to support our growth plans. This includes our annual graduate recruitment program, which saw 250 new graduates join the business last year. We've also invested a lot of time into staff engagement, which included greater use of digital technology to keep close to our people during the pandemic.
One great success was the creation of WSP TV for colleagues to tune in fortnightly for 30 minutes to update on various matters relating to business performance, clients, health and safety and well-being, positive thinking, and back to office encouragement. We also use WSP TV to help new colleagues on board to gain a sense of purpose and WSP culture while working from home. Most of all, it's brought an element of fun into the hybrid workplace.
If I now move on to Central Europe, the markets and the economies are relatively strong, which gives us great opportunity to grow organically and to complement what we already do through focused and selective M&A activity. Most countries are currently only present in one or two of our end markets, so we have a great opportunity to grow market share across the whole region. The introduction of Golder into Central Europe has helped to diversify our service offering and client base by providing a strong earth environment skill base across the region.
Our first strategic priority in the next cycle will be to strengthen our local country presence and build cross-regional client engagement programs and collaborative working to win more work. Looking at the Central European operations, we currently have a headcount of around 1,800 employees across nine countries focused on local and global clients. Our end market revenue split is sorry, 38% in Property and Buildings, 29% in Transport and Infrastructure, 21% in Earth and Environment, and 12% in Industry and Energy.
Moving to the Middle East, we have a mature team who are very selective regarding sustainable growth, where 70% of our revenue relates to program and project management and 30% to design and advisory. In the Middle East, we currently have a headcount of around 1,900 employees across six countries focused on local and global clients, with our greatest presence being in the UAE, KSA, and Qatar. We consider ourselves market leading in property and buildings, project and program management, and transport and infrastructure.
We have a relatively diverse business, working predominantly though in the public sector with an end market split of 49% transport and infrastructure, 47% in property and buildings, and 4% in power and energy. We see good, really good growth potential developing in advisory business lines, working very closely with the more mature U.K. business. We've come into 2022 in the Middle East with a very strong backlog across all of our core markets.
Looking forward into the next strategic cycle. In Central Europe, we will look to drive growth through the next cycle in the Netherlands, Germany, France, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy. This will be aided by greater focus on strengthening our local presence and diversifying our skills together with building cross-country collaboration. Strategic growth in Central Europe will be a mixture of organic and acquisitive growth to become top tier and to provide more critical mass to increase our ability to win and deliver major projects.
Very similarly in the Middle East, we look to drive growth through the next strategic cycle in the UAE, Qatar, and in Saudi Arabia, and in our global design center to support the region's margin enhancement and ability to win and deliver major projects. This growth will come from greater market share in transport and infrastructure, property and buildings, and growth in earth and environment. We also look to grow our front-end advisory services, which will bring revenue growth and margin enhancement. This will come from areas such as digital, net zero, asset management, advisory.
We will also grow our project management and construction services in the ports and maritime and water sectors where we've identified market share potential. That brings me to the end of my presentation. Thank you for listening, and I'd now like to pass over to Guy in Australia. Thank you.
Thanks very much, Mark. Good morning. I'm Guy Templeton. I'm the Chief Executive Officer for the APAC region. Starting with Australia, we're experiencing really strong post-COVID recovery, and we're very well positioned to grow our business aided by historically high levels of infrastructure investment and a very well-balanced client mix. We have roughly equal amounts of work in the public and private sectors, and we have a really good diversification in our end markets. Our backlog is at record highs, and it's grown by 50% over the past year.
Our Australian business now has a headcount of 4,300 people, and we're involved in projects in every state and territory of Australia. We continue to benefit from our very successful integration with Golder. We're increasing our share of work from platinum clients, and we have a leading position now in earth and environment services, very much aligned with the ESG agenda. Despite COVID, we hired 125 graduates last year. It's the most we've taken in in any year, and already in 2022, we've taken a further 68.
WSP has been accredited as an employer of choice for gender equality from 2019 through 2021 against very demanding standards set by the Commonwealth Government's Workplace Gender Equality Agency. We have a clear vision to be the preeminent technical professional services firm in Australia. The two largest drivers of our growth will be, firstly, record levels of investment in infrastructure by governments, which I'll elaborate on in the next slide. Secondly, accelerating decarbonization of our largest clients' operations.
We see that in mining and resources, where we're helping several mining clients pursue the decarbonization and electrification of their operations. We see it in increased investment in renewables. For instance, our work with Star of the South offshore wind farm, and we see it in the pursuit of lower emissions by our major transportation clients, such as through zero-emission buses projects. Now as the largest earth and environment firm in Australia with 1,200 people, we're ideally placed to leverage our preeminent position in sustainability and the combined WSP Golder environmental expertise.
Initiatives we're implementing to support this vision are firstly to be an employer of choice, so we're making good progress on that. For example, WSP is now ranked number two among engineering professional firms as a top graduate employer by the Australian Association of Graduate Employers and number 14 across all Australian organizations. Secondly, more deeply embed technical excellence as a primary driver of client purchase decisions, and that's aided by Golder's industry-leading recognition for technical excellence.
Thirdly, a tighter focus on key accounts by implementing a new platinum client program for 15 clients that together generate more than 40% of our revenues. Australia is experiencing record infrastructure funding. State governments have budgeted over CAD 260 billion of infrastructure investment over the next four years, and the Commonwealth Government has budgeted a further CAD 100 billion over 10 years. This level of investment, coupled with expected strong economic growth, has already allowed us to reach record levels of backlog in Australia.
How we will go on to become the leading technical professional services firm in Australia by 2024 is based on growth in six priority areas. Firstly, capitalizing on major infrastructure programs. Secondly, accelerating Earth and Environment by fully leveraging the combined WSP and Golder capability in what is a growing market. The Golder integration has been very successful. We now have several Golder former executives in senior leadership positions in my team. Scott Fidler is the Director of Earth and Environment nationally and had run Golder in Australia and New Zealand, and Aaron Little is CFO for Australia.
The third area is driving mining and energy to a top three position with a focus on energy transition. Golder provides us with the ability to provide both mine services, so mine closure, tailings dams, et cetera, and mine infrastructure to clients at both the east and west coast of Australia, and this leverages the long-held client relationships of both firms. The fourth area, doubling our defense relationship. Fifth, increasing our digital solutions and strategic advisory offerings with a very clear focus on ESG.
Sixth, pivoting our property and buildings business to higher value-added segments such as healthcare, education, mission-critical, and data centers. We also have opportunity to expand our margins, and this is through greater specialization in higher value disciplines, hence the ambition to increase our digital and strategic advisory offerings. Leveraging our economies of scale following the Golder acquisition and greater use of complementary resource centers in Manila and India. Also improved utilization, which comes through having a strong backlog of pretty large projects.
Turning now to a project. WSP, in joint venture for some of our work, has been appointed as a designer on Victoria's largest road project, the Northeast Link project, and this helps to finally close the missing link in Melbourne's freeway network. As well as building Victoria's longest twin road tunnels, Northeast Link is gonna deliver a dedicated busway and also a North East Trail with more than 34 km of walking and cycling paths that'll take 15,000 trucks off local roads daily and slashing travel times by up to 35 minutes.
Our role is to complete the engineering design, and we'll leverage the specialist geotechnical and ground engineering capabilities at Golder. WSP has grown organically and through acquisition to become the second-largest firm in our industry in Australia by headcount and has been made possible through deep relationships with very substantial clients. Moving on now to New Zealand. In New Zealand, WSP has 2,100 employees and is an equal leader in the New Zealand market by scale. Our brand consideration is 1 in the market and our Net Promoter Score 2.
Our high number of locations represents a very strong regional business, and we're planning further growth in New Zealand driven by a strong pipeline of infrastructure investment, around CAD 50 billion between 2021 and 2025. This includes rapid transit projects such as Auckland Light Rail, investment in new healthcare facilities such as Dunedin Hospital. Also through urban intensification and a critical housing shortage, which is driving around CAD 10 billion investment in cities over the next five years.
Our priority growth areas to achieve this are firstly, doubling strategic advisory, infrastructure advisory. Secondly, growing healthcare, placemaking, transport backed by the strong level of infrastructure investment. Thirdly, building market-leading capability in environment and water, in part on the back of CAD 150 billion planned investment in water infrastructure and delivery over the next 30 years via the Three Waters Reform program. Then also growing property and building share with local authority clients, where we continue to leverage our unique regional footprint.
The strength of client relationships we have developed over what now is a 151-year history in New Zealand. Our New Zealand backlog is now at record levels with, and we had CAD 90 million in project wins since December. That's a major new water win, which I'll talk about on the next slide. Wellington Transport Alliance, a new ferry crossing between the North and South Islands of New Zealand, and a manufacturing plant for Nestlé and the new Dunedin Hospital. WSP has been selected as a preferred tenderer in the water market as design delivery partner under transitional agreement.
This is just getting underway. Our role will be to complete water and wastewater design, both preliminary and detailed designs and consenting. The result's particularly pleasing because it's perfectly aligned to our 2024 growth objective of building market-leading capability in the environment and water sectors. Turning now to Asia. WSP has 3,300 people in Asia, and they're centered on the two regional hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong, where we've operated since 1975, and providing the foundation for our other established businesses in the region.
We're one of the few technical professional services firms that can claim the ability to offer truly multidisciplinary services across the region. Post-COVID stimulus packages around the region are providing a steady flow of public sector opportunities, especially in transport and infrastructure, with strong demand also in the healthcare and industrial sectors. The region is also experiencing increased demand for environmental sustainability, climate advisory services, and investment in renewable energy. Our Asia business continues to maintain high levels of backlog at close to historic highs.
Our vision in Asia is to be the leading regional professional services firm. We'll do that leveraging our existing region-leading property and buildings capability in healthcare, complex facilities, integrated developments, and industry through driving regional collaboration and expertise to take advantage of transport and infrastructure spending, expanding our project management and planning and advisory capabilities to assist clients deliver multidisciplinary and mega developments.
The Chinese Medicine Hospital and Chinese Medicines Testing Institute will be the first Chinese medicine hospital in Hong Kong to provide not only quality medical services, but also a platform to steer Chinese medicine development. We're using a tailored modular design to bring smart, sustainable healthcare technologies to patients, practitioners, and collaborators. That concludes the overview of APAC, and I'll pass now back to Alexandre.
Thank you, Guy. Are we gonna bring The mic. Okay. Thank you. At the beginning of the day, I shared my excitement about the direction we were heading in as a company, and I hope you can now understand why. We have a clear long-term vision that sets an ambitious destination for WSP to become the undisputed leader in our industry. We have our 2022 Global Strategic Action Plan that takes our company to the next level, bringing us one step closer to our destination. We have a leadership team that has the resolve and experience to drive our organization forward.
We have the power of our people, their ingenuity and capacity for innovation. We have an industry-leading platform that is primed for growth and capable of capitalizing on market trends. We have a robust balance sheet and are well-positioned to leverage opportunities, and we have a solid acquisition pipeline to complement our platform. Our path is clear, and we have what we need to succeed. We are WSP, and we are Future Ready. I'll now invite you to watch a short video showcasing our purpose that will be followed by a quick five-minute break before resume with our second Q&A session. Thank you very much.
From railways to runways. From business parks to theme parks. From healthcare to clean air. Decarbonization to digital transformation. Laboratories to libraries. City centers, convention centers. Power generation to railway stations. Sports arenas, marinas. Nature-based solutions to iconic institutions. Bridges, highways, ports and resorts. Aviation, regeneration. From the tallest buildings to the deepest tunnels. We exist to future-proof our cities and environment to change people's lives for the better.
We are scientists, engineers, technicians, consultants, planners, designers, specialists, and entrepreneurs. We are almost 56,000 passionate individuals working together, providing the best solutions to our clients. Where some see challenges, we see a world of possibilities. Applying our state-of-the-art expertise and the collective ingenuity of our people to create Future Ready places for clients and communities locally and across the globe. We are Future Ready. We are WSP.
Thank you. We will now begin our second Q&A session. With the first question from RBC, Saba. For growth in the U.S. Lou alluded to that we have a mature presence in the Northeast, and perhaps, Lou, you could expand on the West Coast and Southern U.S. Oh, it's you here. Sorry about that.
No, no worries. Thanks, Alex.
Mm-hmm.
You know, a comment to start this. First of all, we're not gonna stop our focus on every part of the U.S.A. going forward. I think it's important to recognize that first. Secondly, there are portions of the country where there are robust opportunities where we either do not have a geographic presence in the way we want to or a business line presence, and that's gonna be the focus for us.
If you look at those markets, in the West, it's California, it's the Pacific Northwest, down to Texas and through the Gulf over to Southern states. That's gonna be our focus. They have robust capital programs moving forward. We've got resiliency issues to deal with along the coastlines and a number of other environmental factors. That's what I meant by that comment in my presentation.
Thank you, Lou. The next question from Ian at Stifel. Can you illustrate how 1 million hours saved will benefit the company? I'll let Alain answer this question.
Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Ian, for the question. The simplification program mindset that we want to instill in the organization, first of all, it's centered around our people. We will engage our entire organization in providing ideas, suggestions, feedback on the way we work. We think this journey is gonna be evolving and the nature of the improvement simplification we'll put forward will continue to evolve. It's centered around employee experience, and it's the financial implication is the result, not necessarily the objective.
If you think about what we're gonna do with that time save, you could think about training, upskilling our people from a digital standpoint. You could think about innovation. Also we could have an impact on utilization. With CAD 5 billion of payroll costs annually, just a 1% increase in utilization could drive significant increase in our EBITDA. At the end of the day, simplification is about employee experience, and we think it's gonna create a great deal of excitement in the organization.
Thank you, Alain. The next question from Jacob at CIBC World Markets. Alex, are you comfortable with valuation levels today? First question, the public comp multiples still appear to be elevated versus historical levels. I will start by perhaps addressing the second part of your question, Jacob. Of course, at the moment, in absolute terms, we are seeing that the multiples are higher. I think it would be a mistake to compare the multiples of our industry and the peer group at the moment compared to where they were 10, 15 years ago.
We need to remember that the industry is a whole lot more sophisticated today than it was a decade ago. Clearly, we are leveraging technology in this industry. When I joined this industry more than a decade ago, I personally said and mentioned that I felt the industry was quite static, conservative. I have seen over the years this industry taking off a lot more progressive, not afraid to make changes, structural changes to the industry with new construction methods.
Therefore, the industry as a whole is a lot more efficient and therefore I do see the need to reflect that or have seen the need to reflect that in the trading multiples. The companies are healthier, are better, are more profitable, and I believe that's why you are seeing an increase in multiple. As it relates to your second question, are you comfortable with valuation levels today? I don't believe it's a question of comfort. It's a question of adapting.
Over the last decade, we have seen the multiples going up and down and in every step of the way, in every cycle of the way, and I think I mentioned that earlier today, WSP has been active. We intend to be active in the ups and downs because I see some opportunities in ups and downs. We will continue to be on the watch, and we'll continue to be opportunistic. The next question from Benoit Poirier at Desjardins. Could you talk about the assumptions made in your strategic plan with respect to the contribution, potential impact of the U.S. infrastructure bill on your growth profile? Perhaps, Lou, you can take this one up.
Sure, Alex. Certainly, as part of our strategic plan, that infrastructure bill is gonna play a big part of that growth element going forward. The infrastructure bill does touch pretty much every aspect of our business, and we do expect very positive results coming up. Just a word of caution, though. I think it's important to realize it will take time to see that fund, those funds start to flow in our business. Realistically, as I mentioned in my presentation earlier, we'll start to see those funds flow in a big way in Q3, Q4 of this year, but the real return is gonna be in 2023 and 2024. Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. The next question from Ian Gillies at Stifel GMP Toronto. Given all the government spending ongoing in the regions you operate, do you expect that public revenue to be a significantly larger portion of overall revenue in 2024? With what we know today, Ian, the answer is no. We like the balance that we have in our portfolio. We like the project mix that we have in our portfolio. We have larger-sized project, mid-sized projects, smaller-sized projects, and I mentioned that before. To me, a portfolio of projects is like a vase. I mean, you want pebbles, stone, and sand to fill your vase.
You need a good project mix, a good portfolio of projects. As it relates to public versus private, our DNA and the firm originated in the private sector, the property and building sector. We are going to continue to drive the private sector while growing the public sector as well. I think it's going to remain relatively stable. The next question from Dmitry at Veritas Investment Research: curious to better understand the opportunities regarding the water and the power sector. Perhaps I could ask Mark to start and talk about water, and then we could turn to Lou and discuss about power, or perhaps Marie-Claude, whoever feels could take this one up.
Okay. Thanks, Alex. Firstly, on water touches all of our end markets. It's, you know, everything that we do, there's a water element, whether it's water supply, sustainable drainage, water quality, and given the current climate change agenda, coastal erosion. It touches on everything we do. In many of our regions, we're currently not top tier in that water market. We see huge growth. If I speak on behalf of the U.K., Central Europe, and Middle East, we see huge opportunity to grow our presence across many aspects of water, not just the water industry. As I said, coastal erosion being a big topic for us all.
Thank you, Mark. Marie-Claude, you want-
Yeah, I'll take the power question. We definitely see a lot of growth in renewable power, even if the growth has been there for the past decade, strong growth ahead for wind, for power, solar. Also distribution, because now that the energy consumption is more and more local, then the distribution aspect of the electric grid is also becoming increasingly important. Then we have the storage. What kind of storage? Because with these renewable energies, we also need storage.
Storage will continue to be driving growth, as will hydrogen. Hydrogen, a lot of, you know, a lot of research is being done, and everyone wants to catch the winning recipe on hydrogen. Definitely, we see that as being a growth sector as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Marie-Claude. A question from one of our shareholder. Not gonna name names, this afternoon, but, this question is for Anna-Lena Öberg-Högsta, who joined us recently as part of the Golder acquisition. As a former Golder employee and executive who is now leading the Nordic region, can you tell us more about your experience in joining WSP?
Thank you, Alex. As you all know, change is never easy. However, the global approach to the integration, as well as the warm and welcoming environment, has absolutely supported forming a joint culture. I would also say that it's very exciting to be in a company that puts the Golder core services at the forefront within the earth and environment sector. And it's also very positive for our employees, as WSP opens up a lot of new opportunities. And in the end, I would also say that we're all very excited now about the new strategy and ready to take on the challenges it entails in order to deliver up on it moving forward. Thank you, Alex.
Thank you. The next question from Maxim Sytchev at National Bank Financial, Toronto. Hello, Max. On M&A, Alex, are you seeing PE players going after some of the transactions you have seriously looked at or looking into, I suppose? Or are you focusing on different verticals? Thanks. Well, PE players have been in our industry for a decade, so there's definitely nothing new at the moment, Max. I think we have been competing against PE for as long as I remember. Clearly, the next few years will be an interesting time with the rise of interest rate, very likely.
What this will do to the PE industry and how they will be able to compete against strategic. The other and very important dynamic that is taking place with the increase in multiples in our industry is that privately held firms have also to reflect this increase in multiples and their internal valuation, which makes the buyback of shares from partners leaving the firm an even greater challenge. That's the reason why I do see in ups and downs, in peaks and valleys, some opportunities for WSP in the years to come. I intend to make sure we are going to be competitive on the acquisition front in the years to come.
The next question from Michael at TD Securities. WSP will strive to grow its client revenues to more than half of its business by 2024. What share of WSP's business relates to clean revenue at present, and are there specific market sectors that you expect to drive a relatively greater share of this growth over the next three years? I will let André-Martin answer this question, but I believe the growth will come from all of our large sectors.
Yeah, absolutely, Alex. Thanks for the question. The clean revenues in WSP come from, of course, Earth and Environment. You know, all of our Earth and Environment revenues are considered to be clean. Some of the revenues from transport infrastructure as well, Property and Buildings, clean energy. When you dissect what clean revenue is composed of, you know, if you compare it with the SDGs, as I talked about earlier today, we will see a big correlation between those SDGs and the work that WSP does and the type of services that we offer. It's across all of our verticals. It's across all of our client sectors. Moving forward, there will be greater demand for these clean revenue services.
Okay, the next question from Sabahat Khan, RBC Capital Markets. There was a comment in the U.S. portion that WSP is the only company providing certain end-to-end sustainability-related advisory work. Can you please share additional color on that comment? I don't know whether, Lou Cornell, you wanna take this one up or André-Martin Bouchard or both for that matter. Lou?
I can start and André-Martin .
Yeah, sure.
If you wanna add on to it. You've seen the recent acquisition on the upfront advisory services that we talked about with that acquisition, and I think that's absolutely key to this message, right? We now provide those upfront services all the way through lifecycle on our projects going forward. That's what I was talking about in that comment.
Okay.
Yeah, if I could complement what Lou is just saying. I think we have a fantastic opportunity in WSP as we come from a technical background, but we also can count on great advisory expertise. We can actually bring our services to the C-suite level of our clients, you know, participate in their, in the development of our clients' ESG strategy, sustainability strategy.
We can influence, but also we can take that strategy and then, you know, implement it, execute it, support our clients in the long-term implementation of their sustainability planning. This is, I think, a unique value proposition that WSP can offer to its clients, and we will, you know, as I mentioned earlier today, we will certainly be keeping growing and putting a lot of efforts around these services.
Thank you, André-Martin, and Lou. A question from our shareholder, and perhaps Marie-Claude could expand on the project that she talked about earlier on. Would you be able to share some color regarding the digital journey, and perhaps Alain talking about the internal also transformation and digital transformation that we are going through at WSP. Maybe starting with Marie-Claude, followed by Alain.
Thank you, Alex. As I mentioned in my presentation, digital twins, we're using them more and more, especially with very complex infrastructure projects. What it does is that it allows all project stakeholders, so the designers, the constructor, and the owner, to have a view over the full life cycle of the project. If we change something in design, we can see the impact, not just on the construction cost, but actually on the whole O&M period as well. It's a very transformative way for us to think about project delivery and doing it in collaboration with all the project stakeholders.
Thank you.
I would add to that, over and above the service delivery side of the digital transformation we're on, there's all the internal tools and that we will provide our people that will build efficiency, better business insights or predictive analytic, data analytics, all of these things. Also, from a project standpoint, providing the ability of our people globally to work seamlessly on platform that allows them to collaborate and to design asset together. The journey on digital is quite broad, but it's meant to increase the employee experience and to maintain our relevancy with our client.
Thank you very much, Alain. I think we no longer have the time for additional questions, so I think that will conclude our Q&A session. For all unanswered question, we will be reaching out to you directly. You can rest assured that we will address each and every question that have been sent to us, and, we will be reaching out to you, electronically. On behalf of the team, we would like to thank you for joining us. We really enjoy conducting this Investor Day as a team.
We really enjoy preparing for the next three years. We really enjoy putting this exciting plan, for all of our stakeholders, our clients, our people, and our shareholders, and we're now looking forward, starting this afternoon, to deliver on that plan. I would like to wish you a great day, and I hope that we'll be able to engage, together again soon. Thank you very much.