Group HR and communications director Valerie Hughes-D’Aeth told HR magazine that while this has thrown up challenges, the team has seen it as an opportunity.
"It's been a very demanding year. We've had to review all the processes, systems and policies in the light of this acquisition," she said.
"It has been a great learning and development opportunity though. People realise that it's excellent career-wise to go through something like this. Not many people get the experience of integrating two large companies like this."
One of the reasons Amey's HR team was able to rise to the challenge is the complete overhaul of its HR deliverance, which started back in 2009. Using the Ulrich Model, the service was brought into a central shared service centre with operational business partners liaising with the management.
Hughes-D'Aeth revealed that getting buy-in from the business was difficult at first because it was tricky to explain the new system to senior management.
"The main challenge was articulating what we wanted to do. When you're talking to the leadership, who are used to having HR professionals close to them in the business, it can be hard to explain the shared services model. However, now they see the benefits it has brought they understand the value of it," she said.
Amey won the 2013 HR Excellence Award for best HR team in the private sector in 2013. The publicity around the award means people are keen to work with the company, claimed Hughes-D'Aeth
"We do outsourced work for the Government and we've found [winning an HR Excellence Award] really helped us from a customer perspective. People want to work with a company that's innovative and has good people management. It's all very well us telling people that but the award gave our claims credence, which is crucial," she said.
Another benefit of winning, added Hughes-D'Aeth, is attracting top talent: "People ring us up now and ask if there are any jobs in our HR department; they want to work for an award-winning team."
There is still time to enter the 2014 HR Excellence Awards. Nominations have been now been extended to 28 March 2014.
