Amentum to lay off 56 Richmond-area employees

Chantilly-based government contractor Amentum is laying off 56 Richmond area employees by Aug. 31 due to losing a nearly two-decade old contract with Henrico County-based Fortune 500 tobacco manufacturer Altria.

Amentum, Operation and Maintenance Services, in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, notified the state on July 2 of the layoffs. The letter, written by Amentum Area Operations Manager Daniel Feldmen, says that Altria notified Amentum that it has awarded the contract to a competing contractor and that 56 employees would be impacted. None of the employees are represented by a union.

Feldman told Virginia Business the contract with Altria had been in place since 2007 and entailed mechanical work, HVAC, plumbing, elevator work, landscaping, snow removal and other forms of maintenance. Work was performed at Altria’s headquarters at 6601 West Broad St., as well as other locations within the Richmond area.

However, Altria has recently conducted an internal evaluation of all of its business operations and, in an attempt to be more efficient, it put the contract out for bid, he said. According to Feldman, Altria awarded the contract to Chicago-based global real estate services company Jones Lang Lasalle.  JLL is likely to hire a majority of the employees being laid off by Amentum, he added.

Neither Altria nor JLL immediately returned requests for comment.

Amentum has more than 53,000 employees in approximately 80 countries across all seven continents. The company was founded as a spinout of AECOM’s Management Services Group in 2020 and moved its headquarters from Germantown, Maryland, to Chantilly in 2023.