For the first two decades of its existence SMEC focused primarily on building an export business based in Australia. In this task the company was extremely successful, becoming the most internationally prominent Australian consulting firm and consistently one of the three or four largest Australian suppliers of services to both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank in terms of both number of contracts and dollar value. As a staff owned company SMEC is not subject to valuation in the capital market, but independent valuations commissioned by SMEC indicate that the value of the company has increased dramatically since privatisation in 1993.

During the past decade SMEC has expanded its corporate strategy to encompass the building of businesses offshore. SMEC has established subsidiaries in a number of different countries characterised by the following features:

• company registration under local corporations law
• a large degree of operational autonomy
• SMEC investment is supported by share ownership by local staff wherever possible.

These businesses have in general been very successful and grown rapidly with financial, technical and management support from the SMEC Group. The next stage in this process is the more effective use of these businesses in third countries. SMEC is building an international network of companies capable of supporting each other through the provision of specialist staff as required for short or long term assignments. The objective is to establish a series of businesses in Australia and throughout the Asia-Pacific region which create employment, generate wealth and provide national export income for the country of registration.