Celebrating 25 years of BakerHicks in Switzerland

Large group of people gathered outdoors in a landscaped courtyard, posing together with raised arms near a banner marking 25 years.

On 28th June 2023 we hit the quarter of a century mark since we first opened our offices in Switzerland, marking the beginnings of our operations in continental Europe.

This impressive milestone is testimony to the dedication and agility of our teams in Switzerland. Their commitment to delivering project excellence in the Life Sciences and Industry sectors has seen the company grow from just two people working from a serviced office in Basel back in 1998, to a team of over 250 across Basel, Zurich and Lausanne today.

The opening of our Basel operations came when the company was operating as Design and Project Services (DPS) Limited, under the AMEC plc banner, as part of a move into the extensive Life Sciences market in Switzerland. The Basel region was, and still is, one of the world’s leading locations for the Life Sciences sector and is home to numerous blue chip companies in the industry. And it was this that prompted the move into the city. With this the company then expanded into the specialist pharma, biotech, medtech, fine chemicals and manufacturing disciplines that today make up the European arm of our business.

Over the past 25 years, this specialist Life Sciences offering has continued to grow, operating as Morgan Sindall Professional Services (MSPS) following Morgan Sindall Group’s acquisition of DPS AMEC in 2007, before rebranding to BakerHicks in 2020, unifying our European Life Sciences division to deliver a fully integrated service to both our UK and European clients. In 2018, the European arm was further expanded with the opening of offices in Austria and Germany, and again in 2022 with our move into Belgium. But it all started back in 1998 with that two-person serviced office in Basel.

So, over the coming months we will be celebrating this history and our journey. We got the festivities under way with a staff social in Basel, where under glorious sunshine our team enjoyed an evening of drinks, nibbles and socialising. See below for a gallery of images from the night.