World Transport Consultancy Spring 2008

In an increasingly interconnected world it would seem that no business today is more truly globalised than the transport consultancy sector. Indeed, the larger consulting firms in the UK appear capable of utilising their expertise to bid for work in essentially any and every nation on the globe. But, interestingly, as the features in this magazine hopefully illustrate, the global nature of transport consultancy nowadays is far deeper than just the ability of companies based in nations such as the UK to export their expertise to clients located in countries that currently lack a sufficiently deep base of technical knowledge.

For example, it is now commonplace for local offices to be staffed entirely by local staff, with not an ‘expat’ in sight, meaning that, even though the company name may be British, the work undertaken can often involve Chinese transport experts advising Chinese clients.

And it is increasingly the case that, even for projects ‘at home’, UK firms are sending work on, for example, transport modelling out to their Indian offices, where high quality work can be done much more cheaply.

And, finally, consultant after consultant told LTT that their London office today is a veritable United Nations of expert staff brought in from the four corners of the planet. In short, while the UK consultancy ‘brand’ may be a strong one, in today’s world the experts delivering this service are every bit as international as the client base.