A sexy enginering company?

All right, so working on highways, bridges, mass transit systems and water and wastewater facilities is not likely to impress your supermodel girlfriend or your rap star boyfriend, but it will bring in some nice money for L.A.-based Aecom Technology. The civil engineering firm that Forbes ranked 82nd on its list of largest privately held companies is going public this week with an offering that could run close to $700 million (which will impress your supermodel girlfriend or rap star boyfriend).

Aecom, which started out as a unit of the big chemical company Ashland, became independent in 1990. Average annual sales growth has been running 15 percent over the past five years - much of it helped through acquisitions. This kind of engineering is big, expensive and subject to all kinds of delays and cost overruns, particularly the work that's government funded. Plus, about a third of the contracts are fixed price, which means that the company must eat the overruns. All that said, revenue for the first quarter ended Dec. 31 rose 25.7 percent and net income doubled, to $26 million. Aecom plans to price 35.1 million shares at $18 to $20 each to raise $667.9 million. The company will offer 19.9 million shares and selling shareholders will offer 15.2 million shares. Trading starts on Thursday. IBD