WYG internationalisation to reduce reliance on Irish and British markets

MULTI-disciplined civil engineering consultancy White Young Green (WYG) is looking to reduce dependency on its core markets of Britain and Ireland and boost contribution from its international business to around 35% of group revenue.

The Leeds-headquartered firm has had a presence in Ireland for the last 10 years and had expanded aggressively here in recent years, mainly through acquisition.

However, a group-wide restructuring aimed at making savings of around £5m, (€5.8m) last year has seen its Irish staff numbers drop from 770 to 500 in the last 12 months.

That restructuring was a reaction to the tightening market conditions here and despite its environmental and infrastructure divisions holding up well in the current climate, management is keen to listen to investors and boost results from its overseas divisions.

WYG is also prominent in parts of northern Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe, but the “internationalisation” of the group is measured less on location and more on revenue contribution from those operations.

A measure of how well established and respected the group’s Irish operations are is that Ray Moore, the WYG Ireland managing director, has been handed the dual role of heading up group operations in the United Arab Emirates, particularly Abu Dhabi and Dubai, in conjunction with his current role.

The company is still winning contracts here — most recently a £150m (€174m) contract to provide structural engineering and environmental consultancy for the new training college for the emergency services in Northern Ireland, to be opened in 2012 at Cookstown.

Mr Moore said this week that although infrastructure projects in Ireland won’t dry up during the recession, curbs on government spending will affect his industry.

They will make things like the recently proposed use of pension fund investments in infrastructure projects in order to aid the construction industry vital for the purpose of shoring up the sector.