and facilities management and maintenance, training, logistics, consulting, technical assistance, and systems integration and information technology services, primarily for agencies of the U.S. government and also for national governments around the world.
Our business focuses primarily on providing fee-based planning, consulting, architectural and engineering design services and, therefore, our business is labor intensive. We primarily derive income from our ability to generate revenue and collect cash from our clients through the billing of our employees’ time spent on client projects and our ability to manage our costs. AECOM Capital primarily derives its income from real estate development sales and management fees.
We report our business through four segments: Design and Consulting Services (DCS), Construction Services (CS), Management Services (MS), and AECOM Capital (ACAP). Such segments are organized by the types of services provided, the differing specialized needs of the respective clients, and how we manage the business. We have aggregated various operating segments into our reportable segments based on their similar characteristics, including similar long-term financial performance, the nature of services provided, internal processes for delivering those services, and types of customers.
Our DCS segment delivers planning, consulting, architectural and engineering design services to commercial and government clients worldwide in major end markets such as transportation, facilities, environmental, energy, water and government. DCS revenue is primarily derived from fees from services that we provide, as opposed to pass-through costs from subcontractors.
Our CS segment provides construction services, including building construction and energy, infrastructure and industrial construction, primarily in the Americas. CS revenue typically includes a significant amount of pass-through costs from subcontractors.
Our MS segment provides program and facilities management and maintenance, training, logistics, consulting, technical assistance, and systems integration and information technology services, primarily for agencies of the U.S. government and also for national governments around the world. MS revenue typically includes a significant amount of pass-through costs from subcontractors.
Our ACAP segment primarily invests in real estate projects. ACAP typically partners with investors and experienced developers as co-general partners. In addition, ACAP may, but is not required to, enter into contracts with our other AECOM affiliates to provide design, engineering, construction management, development and operations and maintenance services for ACAP funded projects.
Our revenue is dependent on our ability to attract and retain qualified and productive employees, identify business opportunities, integrate and maximize the value of our recent acquisitions, allocate our labor resources to profitable and high growth markets, secure new contracts and renew existing client agreements. Demand for our services is cyclical and may be vulnerable to sudden economic downturns and reductions in government and private industry spending, which may result in clients delaying, curtailing or canceling proposed and existing projects. Moreover, as a professional services company, maintaining the high quality of the work generated by our employees is integral to our revenue generation and profitability.
Our costs consist primarily of the compensation we pay to our employees, including salaries, fringe benefits, the costs of hiring subcontractors, other project-related expenses and sales, general and administrative costs.
In December 2015, the federal legislation referred to as the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST Act) was authorized. The FAST Act is a five-year federal program expected to provide infrastructure spending on roads, bridges, and public transit and rail systems. We expect that the passage of the FAST Act will continue to positively impact our transportation services business.
The U.S. federal government has proposed significant legislative and executive infrastructure initiatives that, if enacted, could have a positive impact to our infrastructure business.