CKR Consulting to open Doha office by end of March

Stefano Riccardi says Qatar offers a lot of potential for MEP consultants (ITP Images)

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CKR Consulting will open a new office in Qatar by the end of March 2012, the managing director of the South African MEP consultancy has said.

In an interview with MEP Middle East, Stefano Riccardi said that the potential offered by Qatar as it builds up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup convinced CKR Consulting to set up a base of operations in the Gulf Arab state.

“The next port of call is Doha, Qatar. We’re just finalising the set up and the sponsorship (and so on),” Riccardi said, “I would say that by the end of March this year, we should have a fully fledged office in Doha as well.”

The set up of a new office in Qatar follows the promising start up of another CKR Consulting office in Kerala, India.

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That office was opened very recently, within the last six months of 2011. The new office itself was brought about by the success of CKR’s Chennai venture, he added.

Due to 2011 being a tough year, spurred on by the impact of the Global Financial Crisis, Riccardi said that the consultancy had been forced to adapt to changing market conditions.

“The challenge was to keep work coming in, to find new market places, with Africa and Qatar being the two marketplaces we aimed to be into. Africa, you can imagine the growth in that environment.
They say that there was between 6% and 7% growth in the market place over the course of last year,” he explained.

“We’ve got a two pronged approach into Africa,” Riccardi said, “From Dubai, into the Middle East and then into the Northern Africa region. And from South Africa, we’ll manage the sub-Saharan region.”

“Obviously, Qatar is the new growth area, with the 2022 World Cup coming in there. We see it as a very large growth node, which we’re managing from the Dubai office (at present),” he said.