Travel on the agenda

摘要

It perhaps should not come as a major shock that editing a magazine called International Construction would involve a large amount of travel, but my air miles have certainly been working overtime recently. I attended the geospatial show Intergeo in Germany recently, which featured a whole host of technology firms of interest to those in the construction sector, such as industry heavyweights Topcon, Trimble and Hexagon, among many others. Shortly after returning, it was off to Turkey where I met a whole host of interesting construction companies, including Hidromek. At their headquarters in Ankara, I got to see first-hand just how large the new facility they are currently constructing will be. A recurring theme from the visit was the state of the Turkish economy, which has suffered a fairly spectacular downturn recently - many there expect next year to be tough, but all the firms I saw were exporters and obviously this area now becomes more important than ever.