SNC-Lavalin, Quebec's largest engineering firm and one of the world's leading engineering and construction groups, has announced massive layoffs.

The company employs 45,000 people worldwide and will lay off 4,000 employees, or nine per cent of its workforce, over the next 18 months.

The company says it will turn a profit in 2014 but also wants to get rid of underperforming sectors, like mining.

“Our goal is to become a strong and successful Quebec and Canadian national champion," CEO Robert Card said in a conference call Thursday, referring the company's goal of nearly doubling annual revenues.

"The jobs we are talking about here are not in the right place and the right activities for that future company."

In Canada, the cuts will mostly be centred on its operations in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and Vancouver where it has the bulk of its nearly 17,000 Canadian employees. They are in addition to some IT job cuts in Montreal that were announced internally in September.

Delays in the development of the province's much touted Plan Nord are partly to blame.

Outside the company's headquarters today, employees followed orders not to talk to anyone about the cuts, which are expected to begin in a matter of weeks.

Business experts say the company is feeling the effects of poor economic growth in Europe and in parts of, Asia where SNC-Lavalin is active.

“We're seeing very weak growth in Japan, in many emerging markets, in Europe. Really the only place in the world that's starting to see a rebound in growth is in the United States. And a great deal of SNC's work is outside of North America,” said Brett House, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

House also said the move is a sign of broader weakness in the global economy.

“You can see SNC-Lavalin in many ways as a canary in the mine of what’s happening in infrastructure development and large project development globally. If SNC-Lavalin is cutting back, then it probably means that growth is going to look pretty weak in the next few years ahead,” he said.

But SNC-Lavalin has also suffered some serious image problems in recent years -- former vice-president Riahd Ben Aissa pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Switzerland in connection with a corruption scandal involving the family of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Ben Aissa and other former SNC-Lavalin executives are currently awaiting trial in Canada in a multi-million dollar corruption scandal involving illegal payments to secure the contract to build the McGill University Hospital Centre.

The company is also on a black list from the World Bank for a corruption scandal in Bangladesh.

“Even if you have very few rotten apples at the top of your company, if they sully your reputation, it's a roadblock to recovery and the company may limp for a while but I wouldn't count it out,” said Ishwar K. Puri, dean of the faculty of engineering at McMaster University.

In Quebec City, Premier Philippe Couillard said despite SNC-Lavalin's troubles and planned cuts, it still expects it to reimburse some of the money it overcharged Quebecers through past corruption and collusion.

The restructuring is expected to cost $300 million, including $200 million in cash, and generate $100 million in ongoing savings.

-- with files from The Canadian Press