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Ibis hotel, Porto - Portugal - © FGMF

In Spain

Coteba began working in Spain in Coteba-Argos employed around 60 people when the financial crisis struck in 2008. Spain
1992, assisting French clients in was very badly hit, in particular the property development sector, where the effects were
the property development sector. devastating. Virtually all projects - especially those to construct housing complexes - were
It consolidated its activity in 2000 stopped, some of them in the midst of the works phase. Fortunately, we were working on a
by managing the development wide range of operations including office buildings, shopping centres, and corporate design
of Exxon’s network of service and engineering. We were therefore able to ride out the crisis but only at the cost of a drastic
stations in Spain and Portugal. reduction in our teams.
The subsidiary then expanded its
expertise in the management of When the market began to recover in 2012, we quickly rebuilt the business. We won back some
multi-site programmes into the of our old clients and recentred our activity on our two strong points: project management and
food and car dealership sectors dual engineering/architectural services. We were able to re-form a mixed, flexible and close-
(McDonald’s, Renault, etc.), knit team of 55 employees, including managers, architects and engineers, all accustomed to
while at the same time working working together on projects and to sharing their respective know-how. We are now reopening
on more traditional business our offices in Barcelona and in Lisbon, Portugal, which we were compelled to close during the
property development projects. crisis.
In 2008 Coteba Spain acquired a Today we are working throughout Spain on a wide range of prestige projects. In Madrid, we are
Spanish firm named Argos, whose providing project management for new offices for Google, and supervising the construction of
activity was organised into two high-end shopping centres and the extension of the IFEMA Ferial, one of the largest conference
departments, one focusing on centres in Europe. We have delivered a new factory for American automotive supplier AAM and
project management and the other are working on a train construction site for Alstom. We are continuing our multi-site design
on architecture and construction and project management services for the Volkswagen and Renault groups, and are assisting
engineering. Basic Fit in deploying its fitness clubs in Spain.

78 I ARTELIA, 10 YEARS OF EXISTENCE, 100 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE