British Architects Massively Sign Up to Foreign Development Projects

Recent survey suggests that British architects do not any longer consider the UK construction market as strong and are looking for business opportunities overseas.
The results of survey, recently carried out by the Architects’ Journal, suggest that almost 60% of architects’ contracts will come from foreign markets in 2010 with 20% of those coming from the Middle East. The survey results indicate that Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia property markets can provide UK architects with the most new business.
The survey showed that currently foreign contracts pay £1.4 billion of income, which already exceeds the domestic level and is set to further growth. No wonder that British architects are determined that the domestic market is no longer strong enough.
Europe is said to remain one of the important markets for UK architects with 18% of contracts coming from the Western Europe and 14% of contracts coming from the Eastern Europe. Another important contractor for UK architects is Africa, the number of contracts from which has increased from 4% in 2008 to 7% in 2009.
According to Kieran Long, who takes the post of Editor-in-Chief at The Architects’ Journal, which was in charge of the survey, Britain and London, in particular, have become a place, where foreign clients are seeking excellent architects.
The results of the conducted survey also showed that on the domestic market architects’ services will be mainly required in the public areas, infrastructure in particular: Crossrail and Network Rail projects, power and fire stations, prisons, healthcare and education.