Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question is from Michael Dudas with Jefferies.
Michael Dudas - Jefferies
Craig, you mentioned in your press release or maybe in your prepared remarks the complicated nature of the heavy process market. I wondered if you could get a little bit more color into that.
I think we're all understanding of the marketplace and the pressures put on, maybe is it more client specific what Jacobs provides to the clients? Is it overall just general malaise and concern? Could you maybe expand a little bit about how that is impacting your near-term visibility and results?
Craig Martin
Absolutely. In the simplest way I can characterize it, Mike, is like this. As you know, we get out and see customers very aggressively. I've seen a number of CEO's or COOs of our customers over the last quarter and as I talk with each of these, it's almost like I could tell them what they're going to say because the speech goes something like this.
It says things aren't so bad. Our company is doing better than the overall market would suggest that we ought to be. And so we feel pretty good about our business and that sounds really good. And then comes the [but], and the but is, but we're not sure what's going to happen and we see a lot of uncertainty in others, so we are not making commitments quite like we did. We are going to think about these investments a little differently and it's going to change the way we think.
Generally the change in the way they think involves different approaches to projects, different hurdle rates, more investigative or development kind of work around their projects and that makes not so much the projects themselves, but the timing of them more uncertain and it's amazing how uniform that response is. And that's why I'd say it's a highly uncertain marketplace because it's almost down to how does the customer feel instinctually about the market.
Michael Dudas - Jefferies
And to follow-up on that a bit, you did an excellent job in your overhead reduction in the first and second fiscal quarters of this year. Is that more reflective of what you think is more of a run rate business level from a gross margin absolute basis over the next four quarters, or is it being a bit more proactive and taking this as an opportunity for you to kind of improve utilizations or move people from the office to the field or vice versa?
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