Engineering success in China

The Scott Wilson Group provides design and engineering services to clients in the transportation, buildings & infrastructure, environment and natural resources sectors. Established in the UK in 1951 as Scott & Wilson, Kirkpatrick & Partners, today the company employs 6,300 members of staff in 80 offices across the world, 40 of which are outside the UK.

In 1952, Scott Wilson's aviation experts were invited by the Hong Kong Government to explore the feasibility of expanding Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport to accommodate international flights. Working in China was a natural extension of the presence built up in Hong Kong over the years.

“Following Deng Xiaoping’s historic opening up of China, we began actively serving multinational companies, setting up manufacturing facilities on the Mainland in the early 1980s,” says Hugh Blackwood, Group Chief Executive of Scott Wilson. “As we monitored trade and investment flows in the area, we realised the enormous long-range potential for providing consultancy services in China. Our ability to provide services both as an international consultant and a local design institute give us a competitive advantage which is difficult for our competitors to emulate.”

Working together

In 1994, Scott Wilson established the first provincial-level joint venture with a local design institute, Jiangsu Scott Wilson Engineering Consultants Co. Ltd. It was a commercial success, and has since been followed by a wholly foreign owned enterprise in Shanghai and, in April 2008, a second joint venture with the Chongqing Communications Planning Survey & Design Institute.

Over the years, Scott Wilson has come to appreciate the differences in business culture between China and the UK and worked hard to develop strong relationships with partners and clients.

“Business in China is heavily based on long-term relationships with trusted partners,” says Blackwood. “It has been our goal for over 20 years to gain the trust of our clients, staff and joint venture partners through the quality of our work and the integrity of our brand. It’s essential to have a presence on the ground, obtain necessary operating licences, and get to know key players in government and business."

“We realised the enormous long-range potential for providing consultancy services in China”

Making contacts Scott Wilson has also built up relationships with all the Communication Departments and local design institutes, which are responsible for transport infrastructure at municipal and provincial levels. These contacts helped the latest joint venture to come about.

“We’ve established good relationships with the Chongqing authorities,” says Blackwood. “We have focused on developing trust, whilst offering them value-added services and capability as well as the mechanism to grow and diversify their own service offering. It actually did not take long to get the joint venture in Chongqing established, since the trust was already there. We now have a 60 per cent stake in the joint venture and have appointed our own senior staff to oversee operations there.”

Supporting success

Scott Wilson’s business in Greater China has exceeded the company’s expectations, with profitability consistently surpassing other parts of its Asia Pacific operations. Despite concerns for the global economy, the demand in China remains strong for improved infrastructure, a better environment, higher quality buildings and sustainable natural resources management – all sectors where Scott Wilson adds value to clients, domestic and foreign alike.

The company credits UK Trade & Investment for helping it to achieve this success. Since half of its offices are located internationally outside the UK, the company has often looked to UK Trade & Investment as one of its sources for market intelligence in emerging markets.

“In China, we partnered with the British Embassy and Chongqing Consulate General,” says Blackwood “They helped us both directly and indirectly with market intelligence, facilitating access to Chinese government officials, particularly when our senior staff visit from the UK, assisting with visa applications for our Chinese clients who travel to the UK on business exchanges, and organising training visas for our Chinese colleagues. This ongoing help with day to day matters really makes our work easier.”