The Friday Interview:Civil engineering firm Project Management is on the verge of breaking new ground. The Dublin and Cork-based consultancy has just won two contracts to build a pair of highly specialised research laboratories in Singapore, writes Barry O'Halloran.

With a combined value of €4.5 million, the deals are not huge by today's standards. But in the words of chief executive Pat McGrath, they are "small but significant".

The labs will be located in Biopolis, a specialised campus given over to high-end biotechnology research and development (R&D), which McGrath says the Government here should consider as a model for fulfilling its own R&D aspirations. "It's not really the capital value. But an early win in this area is a huge boost to us."

He describes the deals as an early win because Project Management has only begun exploring opportunities in Asia and the Pacific Rim in the last year. Landing something this quickly in markets with a reputation for being difficult to crack is an achievement.

Closer to home, Project Management is responsible for one major development that is likely to attract plenty of headlines over the next few years - the rebuilding of Lansdowne Road stadium. The company is project manager for the development rather than the designer. This means it will be responsible for managing the demolition of one structure and the construction of what will hopefully be a world-class facility. A lot of this involves handling what McGrath calls "boundary issues". In other words, the firm is not just dealing with what happens on site, but anything that arises involving it.

"You're dealing with the planning authority, the concerns that neighbours have and the fact that a railway line runs under the west stand," he says. "It's a city-centre project, and you can imagine all the material that has to come out and has to go in, and you have to do it all without imposing on people and abiding by the terms of the planning. That's the big challenge."

Acknowledging that it's a minnow in world terms, McGrath says the company plans to build itself into an international player in its area of business, which he sums up as "designing and building complex structures" such as pharmaceutical and biotechnology facilities. About 80 per cent of its business comes from Ireland, with 20 per cent from outside the country. However, McGrath would like to shift that balance to 70/30.

Since it was founded in 1973, Project Management has worked with most of the major multinationals that have invested here, including Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Genzyme and Johnson & Johnson, for which it is working on the €500 million Centocor development in Cork.

These relationships are potentially its passport to building an international presence. The multinationals like to develop and maintain partnerships with suppliers such as Project Management and, as a consequence, will bring them to other locations.

"We've developed a bit of a niche working with multinational firms in Ireland, particularly in the high-technology, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and semiconductor areas," he says.

"In a way, we've grown with Ireland's success on the back of American FDI [ foreign direct investment] in this country.

"We've been an indirect beneficiary of that. We've worked with most of the big American firms like Intel and Johnson & Johnson . . . That's brought us to being one of the biggest project management and engineering firms in Ireland."

McGrath continues: "The next phase of the business is to launch that overseas and to turn Project Management from being a large Irish firm doing bits and pieces overseas to being a truly international project management and engineering firm.

"It's very doable because these multinationals, if you do a good job for them in one place, they'll tend to give you work in other locations."

By the looks of it, the company has been doing a good job. It employs 1,600 people: about 1,100 in Ireland, 400 in eastern Europe and the rest in various locations around the world. Turnover last year jumped 36 per cent to €166 million, and profit before tax was €9 million.

While that was up on the €7.7 million recorded in 2005, McGrath says it was proportionately less in turnover terms, but this is because it has been investing money in its own development plans.

Project Management has just made its first big investment of 2007. Over the last week, it bought Devereux Architects - a mid-sized practice in Britain with about 65 staff, a turnover of £4.5 million (€6.5 million) and profits before tax of £153,000.

The firm is well known for its work in health and public-sector projects in Britain and further afield, including the Caribbean and Middle East.

"What we're looking at is reputation rather than size," McGrath says. "They're an excellent firm with an excellent track record and an excellent cultural fit."

Buying the firm was a learning experience for Project Management. It looked at dozens of companies in Britain before deciding on Devereux.

This will not be the last acquisition either. The company has hired its own mergers and acquisitions analyst and an in-house lawyer, and McGrath says they intend to put what they learned during the Devereux deal to good use.

It also has the help of its chairman, Don Godson, who knows a thing or two about buying businesses as a former chief executive of CRH - one of the Republic's most acquisitive companies.

The recent expansion comes on top of the group's already strong presence in eastern Europe and Poland in particular, where it is has a base in Wroclaw.

The EU accession states are poised for a period of sustained development. Poland alone is set to receive in the order of €60 billion in structural funding. Much of this will be spent on the same type of big-ticket projects in which Project Management has built its solid reputation.

On The Record

Name:Pat McGrath

Post:Chief executive, Project Management Group

Born:1947

Family:Married to Terri with four grown-up children

Career:Educated by the Christian Brothers in his native Clonmel, Co Tipperary. Won a university scholarship and went on to study engineering in UCD. He worked in the US for a period before returning to join Project Management Group in the late 1970s

Something that might surprise:He is chairman of the interim Health Information and Quality Authority, established to ensure that the service meets nationally agreed standards

Something you might expect:He is on the board of the Irish Management Institute (IMI)

Outside interests:Sport - he's a big hurling fan and a keen skier. He recently celebrated his 60th birthday by skiing in Val d'Isere

Why is he in the news?Project Management has just bought English architects' firm Devereux and has won its first two contracts in the far east.