While China and India are being labelled potential recession-busters, a leading UK-based international design and construction consultancy is saying the real opportunity is to the west.
London-based McBains Cooper is outstripping all business forecasts in Latin America – just six months after opening offices in Mexico and Peru.
“We expected to break even after about a year, but we’re in profit after just a few months – and have forged some very strong and lucrative agreements and contracts with several Latin American governments,” said Santiago Klein, Managing Director of McBains Cooper International.
“We have a number of public-private partnership projects on the go, and several tenders reaching fruition – commercial sensitivities prevent us saying precisely what, but the majority have arisen from Latin American government officials seeing ‘end-to-end’ projects we have completed in the UK and simply saying: ‘we want that in our country’.
“What we’ve learnt very quickly is that British design and construction professionals have a very high reputation in Central and South America, and Latin American management and staff who have professional qualifications in architecture and design from UK and European universities, and work for UK companies, are highly sought after on the other side of the Atlantic.
“When the two are combined, the package is unbeatable; what is really attracting the interests of Latin American governments and their construction procurement agencies is our ‘interdisciplinary’ approach – our team comprises professionals involved in every element of design and construction, all employed full-time by McBains Cooper.
“‘Interdisciplinary’ should not be confused with ‘multidisciplinary’; that’s where other UK companies have failed in Latin America – they have claimed in-house expertise across every necessary element in a construction project, but turned up with sub-contracted and partner businesses, who then bicker over responsibilities and budgets.
“The Latin American governments do not like that: they see it as self-proclaimed advanced nations treating them as being naive developing-world, when in fact they are fast-developing and highly-advanced, and, importantly, have substantial budgets.” |
