Alistair Houghton on how a Liverpool firm used the World Expo in Shanghai as a springboard to success in China

FOR Brock Carmichael Architects, signing up to the World Expo in Shanghai was a gamble that paid off.

BCA, which was struggling in the teeth of a downturn that has seen many building projects postponed or cancelled, had never worked abroad before.

But, after hearing about the opportunities available in China, the practice signed up to sponsor Liverpool’s pavilion at the Shanghai event and sent three of its partners to China to start networking.

A year later, the fruits of that work are showing. As reported on page one, the practice has won work on two massive regeneration schemes, both of which dwarf most UK construction projects in their size and scale.

It has created a masterplan for a marina and thousands of homes on reclaimed land at the port of Tianjin, while it is also working on plans for an urban regeneration scheme in southern China that is so large that it would cover the whole of Liverpool city centre.

Those contracts were secured after a lot of hard work, with many visits to China and many hours of frenzied work carried out online and across timezones.

BCA now has a partnership with Hong Kong practice Oval, as well as a partner based in Hong Kong, and is looking to secure work elsewhere in Asia.

And its partners hope they will be able to attract Asian investors to Liverpool.

It all means partner Michael Cosser can say, with pride: “We are an international design business now”.

It’s the kind of success story that Liverpool Vision was hoping for when it planned the city’s presence at the Expo.

The city’s investment in the Expo was controversial, with some questioning what the city would get out of the event.

But Vision insisted that, while there may have been few immediate “wins” from the Expo, it would generate long-term gains for the city.

It says that, since the Expo, many more Mersey firms have started thinking about doing business in China.

And BCA’s partners are clear that, without the Expo, they would never have started work in China at all.

Sitting around a table in a basement in Old Hall Street, Liverpool, five of BCA’s partners talked about how, back in the chill economic climate of 2009, they first started to consider venturing into China’s economic hothouse.

BCA, founded in 1974, has worked on some of Liverpool’s most iconic developments, including the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts, the Merseyside Maritime Museum and One Park West at Liverpool One.

Partner John Cassell said: “By 2009 we had work all over the country. It was wonderful. Then the lights got switched off overnight.

“We were, like every other architect in the country, scratching our heads.

“At the same time other people in the city, when we were going to various functions, were talking about Shanghai.”

BCA’s partners heard about Shanghai from people such as Neil Sturmey from Grant Thornton, and became intrigued about the possibilities.

And so, after talking to Liverpool Vision, BCA committed itself to the Expo, focusing on Liverpool Week in October.

Several of BCA’s projects were featured at the Expo. Partner Martin Watson said: “Our projects were bring profiled as part of the city’s regeneration over the past 25 years. It would have been a shame for us not to be there when our projects were such a big element of that.”

So three partners planned to go to China for a week, attending the Expo and then meeting other potentially useful contacts. They even added a Mandarin section to their website.

“Then”, said Mr Cassell, “we had a stroke of luck.

“We had a former associate called Alfred Yeung. He was Hong Kong-born, and went back to pursue his future and his career there.

“In those 20 years since he’d been in China, he’d built a very successful career for himself as an architect and developer in mainland China. He was very pleased to see that we were coming over, and we arranged to meet.

“That was key to us. Doing work in China is all about partnering.”

Mr Cosser said: “By the time we’d got there, he’d given thought as to who we should see.

“That led, on the first day when we got off the plane, to us going to a meeting Alfred had arranged that led to us entering an international design competition.

“That first venture was very interesting and revealing. It took three months of really intensive effort and three further visits back.”

Partner Chris Bolland said: “It was an enormous learning curve. It was a type of project we had not really done before, on a scale we hadn’t done before.

“We were working with a client with whom we didn’t share a language. We were working remotely under incredible pressure.”

BCA was runner-up in that first competition, but that work itself led to the company’s partners making more contacts in China.

Partner Michael Keane said: “The key was not just Alfred’s introduction, but the fact we had to go back repeatedly. It meant we had to build a relationship with Oval Partnership in Hong Kong.

“Our repeat visits led to other consultations with clients. We became familiar faces.”

BCA and Oval now work together under a common brand – Octagon. That alliance gives BCA access to other cities in China through Oval’s offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu.

BCA sells its skills in masterplanning and concept planning, rather than designing individual buildings.

China is not short of skilled designers who can create individual buildings. But what it does need is expertise from the West in planning large urban mixed-use schemes, along the lines of Liverpool One or the transformation of Canary Wharf.

BCA and Oval have teamed up to work on plans for a 3.5m sq m urban regeneration plan in Kunming, southern China.

Mr Bolland said: “We wanted to get away from the approach that a lot of Chinese cities have taken in redevelopment of this scale by creating a very strong public landscape in the form of a central park.

“That large amount of green space in the UK is something we take for granted. It’s only now in China that they’re taking that long-term approach to developing sustainable communities. Our expertise is something they can respect and are able to utilise.”

The project is fronted by Oval’s Beijing office, backed by BCA’s Liverpool team.

Mr Bolland said: “One of the first exercises we did was to se how big it was by plotting it over Liverpool. All in, it pretty much covered everything from The Strand to St George’s Hall and from the ring road to Duke Street.”

And in recent weeks, BCA secured the deal to masterplan part of a massive regeneration scheme in Tianjin.

Developers have reclaimed a huge expanse of land from the sea.

“They have constructed a huge artificial peninsula which is about a quarter the size of Wirral,” said Mr Bolland.

One side of the peninsula will form an extension to Tianjin’s container port. But the other will boats beaches and space for homes and leisure facilities.

Octagon’s client has a 52-acre plot of land on the peninsula and wanted ideas on how to develop it.

The winning proposals from BCA include a marina, a yacht club, 200 villas, and apartment blocks containing 2,800 homes.

BCA has started to expand again as a result of its Chinese success, and is looking to recruit more designers and Mandarin-speaking architects.

Alfred Yeung, the former BCA associate, is now a partner at the company, driving its Asian expansion. BCA is using its Hong Kong base as a springboard to the rest of Asia, and has looked at projects in Cambodia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.

For all their talk of Asia, BCA’s partners stress that the bulk of the company’s work is still carried out in the North West.

But BCA’s Chinese work could reap rewards for its home country. The company has, says Michael, been approached by Chinese developers looking for business opportunities in the UK.

And BCA’s Chinese partners are also keen to sell Liverpool to their compatriots.

“Alfred is incredibly passionate about Liverpool,” said Mr Cosser.