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Europe鈥檚 largest contractor, Vinci, has stepped up its global expansion, opening an office in Turkey just five months after setting up a base in Canada, where the group is chasing
over 拢1.2bn worth of PFI hospital work.

The 鈧�34bn-turnover (拢30bn) firm opened an office in Istanbul in Turkey, following an investment in $100m (拢63.6m) groundworks engineering firm Zetas. The companies now has a total of 200 staff in Turkey. The group previously opened an office in Vancouver in April that now employs four people.

Vinci is already bidding on a PFI hospital project in British Columbia understood to be worth about 拢93m and is eyeing a future pipeline of up to 10 additional PFI health opportunities across the province.

John Stanion, chairman and chief executive of Vinci鈥檚 UK contracting arm, said: 鈥淲e are looking at markets around the world that are seeing exponential growth. Turkey is one of them, where we have just invested in a groundworks company, and we have a base in Vancouver now to allow us to bid for a number of upcoming PFI hospitals. We have also opened offices in Oman, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.鈥�

David Finch, managing director of Vinci Investments covering PFI in Canada, said: 鈥淚n British Columbia there are pipeline plans to start a new hospital project every six to nine months over the next three years. Each one will be worth 拢310-370m, in some cases more. That鈥檚 a 拢1.2bn pipeline of possible hospital work and we are looking to get involved with as many of those projects as possible.鈥�

锘縏he PFI market in Canada, known as P3, has been developed to kickstart infrastructure development across the country. The Canadian government is developing P3 opportunities through two initiatives, a 拢740m P3 Canada Fund that will support innovative projects and a 拢16m commitment over five years to establish a federal P3 office to facilitate broader use of P3s in Canadian infrastructure projects.