So I'm watching the "Today Show" this morning while eating breakfast and they had a story on the frenetic construction in Abu Dhabi. Knowing how many A/E firms (Burt Hill and Ellerbe Becket, for example) work in the Middle East, and thinking of how this would be great PR for the A/E industry, I watched the piece.
Sadly, while the piece talked about how Abu Dhabi will spend something like $1.75 billion on construction in the next five years, the reporter, Richard Engel, NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent who made his bread and butter with the network as a freelance journalist covering the war in Iraq, never mentioned how it's U.S. firms who are designing these projects.
Not sure how a reporter can cover a story in a foreign country for a U.S. television show and not talk about the American tie-in, especially when you can't turn on the television or pick up a newspaper these days without hearing how the economy is in the tank, but it didn't happen.
Thankfully, the absence of acknowledgment in Engel's story does not change the prospects for American A/E firms working in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Ed
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