Livingston: High Value Opportunities offer key to export success.

Trade Minister Lord Livingston pledges on-going government support to help UK infrastructure professionals to win so-called High Value Opportunity projects around the world.

Antony Oliver
16 April 2014

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Livingston told the UK's leading infrastructure professionals that global mega programmes of work, ranging from healthcare projects in China to airports and railways around the world or the World Cup in Qatar, were ideally suited to the UK’s expertise.

“High Value Opportunities are large projects where we can put real programmatic skills behind them to try and win for the UK.” He explained. “These programmes are very important because of the opportunity that they present.”

"We need to focus further afield – yes we need to keep up to date with our traditional partners but there are also so many other opportunities. In many countries we have to double our exports just to hold onto our market share. That shows the rate of opportunity but also the challenge.” Lord Livingston

Livingston used his speech to the British Expertise annual awards last week during the government's Export Week to highlight the on-going need to drive exports, pointing out that the scale of opportunity across the world for UK construction professionals was immense.

“We are not growing exports at the rate that we want to.” He said. “It grew by 2% last year and while that is better than our main European competitors it is not the rate of growth that we want. We need to focus further afield – yes we need to keep up to date with our traditional partners but there are also so many other opportunities. In many countries we have to double our exports just to hold onto our market share. That shows the rate of opportunity but also the challenge.”

Livingston commended the UK’s professional business services as “a real British success story” highlighting that the infrastructure sector earned £47bn overseas last year, some 10% of the UK’s total exports. 

Perhaps on the back of the 2012 Olympics success, he said, Britain was now known as the “can-do country” with world leading skills in design and build, project management and sustainable development. 

Livingstone pledged support to ensure that, through trade missions and a commitment to free trade across the world, this export success story continued to grow.

“I hear too many people say that we need to reduce our dependence on services and just have more manufacturing,’ he said. “I want to grow our manufacturing every bit as much as anyone and I am delighted that Siemens has announced they are opening up in Hull and creating 1000 jobs in wind turbines and that Hitachi is using the UK as its European centre for train building. But I am also proud of our service business. It is creating jobs and great exports - you are a great asset for Britain and I want you to be an even greater asset in future.”

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British Expertise International Awards 2014

The winners:

Outstanding International Business Award 2014

Winner: Hyder Consulting Middle East Limited

Highly commended: Turner & Townsend

Outstanding International Business Award (SME) 2014

Winner: Charlie Goldsmith Associates

Beale & Company Solicitors LLP

Outstanding International Collaboration Award 2014

Winner: Crown Agents (Ghana e-Government Trips Implementation)

Highly commended: Mott MacDonald (English in Action) and Ramboll UK (Flood Relief Housing and Sanitation Project, Bangladesh (with ActionAid))

Outstanding International Design Project Award 2014

Winner: Mott MacDonald (Marina Coastal Expressway, Singapore)

Outstanding International Architecture Project Award 2014

Winner: Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios (Meixi Lake Green Building Exhibition Centre, China)

Highly commended: AEDAS Architects Limited (Al Bahr Towers, Abu Dhabi)

Outstanding International Development Project Award 2014

Winner: IMC Worldwide Limited (Sabha Khola and Arun River Bridge Project, Nepal)

Outstanding International Development Project Award (Non Physical) 2014

Winner: HTSPE Limited (Rwanda: Land Tenure Regularisation)

Outstanding International Development Project in a Fragile State 2014

Winner: Roughton Group (Nigerian Rail Rehabilitation - Consultancy Services)

Highly commended: Ramboll UK (Flood Relief Housing and Sanitation Project, Bangladesh (with ActionAid))

Outstanding International Development Project in a Fragile State (Non Physical) 2014

Winner: Adam Smith International (Support for the Office Burundais des Recettes, the Republic of Burundi's Revenue Authority)

Outstanding Environmental Project Award 2014

Winner: URS (Hector and the Humpback Whales: An Innovative Approach to Dredging, Gabon)

Young Consultant of the Year 2014

Winner: Winner: Mayssa Day, Coffey International Development

Highly commended: Gordon Carver - GEMS Education Solutions, Hayley Gryc – ARUP, Adam Molleson - Adam Smith International