Management draws on wealth of experience in strategy planning

More than 20 years in the provision of engineering design and project management for major capital investment projects by multinationals has had a positive effect on the management style of Project Management Group, its chief executive, Mr Pat McGrath said yesterday.

"We have developed a very strong, professional culture, both technically and from a management point of view," said Mr McGrath.

"You can't spend nearly 25 years working with multinationals without adopting a professional management style. Project Management has been a beneficiary of working for American multinationals. We have learned a lot from those. "But we have blended it with a lot of what is good with Irish management culture. We are proud to be Irish. In Project Management, everyone uses first name terms and there is a task-orientated working environment. We have a no-blame culture. We try to learn from mistakes rather than blaming somebody."

Project Management Group is an engineering and technical services consultancy organisation, serving clients in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, electronics, food, energy, infrastructure and commercial sectors. Its client list includes companies such as Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Smithkline Beecham, Xerox and IBM.

"Project Management competes for big projects against international competition and it is one of the few Irish companies that can take on the international engineering companies and beat them," said Mr McGrath.

The company also provides a range of consultancy and other services in areas such as environmental health and safety, automation, software development, general management consultancy and e-business.

Over the past five years, Project Management has seen phenomenal growth, with employee numbers increasing from 320 in 1995 to more than 1,000 today. In that time annual revenue has increased from £16.7 million (€21.2 million) to £67.4 million.

The company has expanded significantly overseas, with offices in the UK, Poland, Singapore and the US. International business now accounts for 10 per cent of total revenues with plans to grow it further.

Late last year Project Management made its first acquisition when it bought Techkon, a small engineering consultancy company in Wroclaw in Poland. In the Republic, it has also opened a Limerick office to add to its Dublin and Cork offices.

"In terms of future growth, we are targeting the National Development Plan within Ireland and we will continue to work with our multinational clients here," said Mr McGrath.

"At the same time we are looking at current trends and we see a lot of foreign direct investment into other parts of the world, particularly in central and eastern Europe and that's why we set up in Poland."