Aussie firm flies high with Emirates

The Mole was privileged last week to be a guest at the opening of the new Emirates Lounge at Sydney Airport and over a cool beverage struck up a conversation with Graeme Davy, Managing Director of Smith Madden Group, the designers and architects of the beautiful space now available for Business and First Class travellers.

Intrigued how a local firm had so succesfully acquired such a prestigious international client, I asked Graeme for a little more information on the business and the process. 

The Smith Madden Group was established in 1982 in Perth to provide functional and cost effective workplace environments and quickly expanded to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

This success has enabled the company to provide design and project management services not only in Australia but New Zealand, USA, UK, Europe and Asia with a reputation as an industry leader – a standing reinforced by the many satisfied clients for whom services have been undertaken.

The Smith Madden Group (SMG) secured Emirates as a client in 1999 when in competition with other design companies they were appointed to establish the Asia Pacific call centre in their Melbourne Head office at 257 Collins St.

Three years ago SMG were invited to tender for the design and construction of the Brisbane Emirates lounge. This was to be the first Emirates departure lounge built outside Dubai – they were the successful tenderer.

• In early 2004 they were appointed to design and build the new Emirates lounge at Auckland. This terminal is very cramped so they hade to be very creative in consolidating two former lounge sites (Compass and Garuda) where there is no natural light into a fully unified and inviting lounge facility where the illusion of light was created by the use of ceiling coffers and speciality lighting treatments.
• JFKIAT and Gatwick – in mid-2004 SMG were appointed to design and build the lounges in these two locations. The former is 1100sm in size and Gatwick is the largest lounge outside Dubai at 1590sm – both these lounges were completed on time and on budget  in Oct/Nov 2005.Local project managers and support staff were retained in both locations to co-ordinate the projects on the ground although much of the loose furniture and fittings were sourced from Australia and Dubai.
•  Late in 2004 SMG were invited to tender for the Sydney and Perth lounges site and these were both completed in December 2005 At 870sm and 650sm respectively these lounges are both spacious and stylish.
• This brings the number of lounges established by SMG for Emirates in Australia to 4 with Melbourne (730sm) to follow in mid-2006 as well as Frankfurt (650sm) and Munich (630sm) within the same timeframe.

Congratulations to SMG for the fantastic job they have done and also to Emirates for providing their customers with a lounge experience second to none.