Irish engineering group doubles capacity in Poland

Irish consulting and civil engineering group, Project Management, is spending €8 million on doubling its capacity in Poland.

The company is building new offices at a site it has just bought in Wroclaw in the central European country. The move will see it double the number of people it has working in Poland to 500.

Project Management is also looking to grow by acquiring local firms. Michael Shelly, managing director of its international division, said it planned to continue its expansion in the region "via the acquisition of suitable architectural and engineering firms here in Poland".

Project Management has been building a presence in eastern Europe for over a decade. Currently it is working on developments with a total capital value of more than €450 million in Poland, Slovakia and Romania.

It has charge of €200 million worth of projects elsewhere in Europe. These include a manufacturing plant for LG Philips near its new base in Wroclaw, a Dell production facility in Lodz and a university lifescience park in Krakow.

Poland and other eastern European countries are set to gain from EU-backed spending on infrastructure on an even larger scale than the sums spent in the Republic in the early 1990s.

Project Management has offices in Cork and Dublin. It provides combined architectural and engineering services to clients in Ireland, Europe and the Far East.

It is managing the €365 million Lansdowne Road Stadium redevelopment project. It is also working on building biomedical facilities for Wyeth in Dublin and Centocor in Cork, the Pier D facility in Dublin Airport, and the Dublin/Meath and Cork/Midleton rail redevelopment projects.

Earlier this year, the company bought Devereux Architects in the UK.