Access in elite band of Sri Lanka’s ‘Most Respected Entities’

Sri Lanka’s premier business magazine LMD, with its unique corporate honour roll that benchmarks the country’s Most Respected Entities, positioned industry leader Access with its premier multi-sector engineering expertise within the Top 20 of its ‘Most Respected Entities’.

From being in the top 100 ‘Most Respected’ at 56 last year, Access was placed at 11, a phenomenal jump of 45 places, which certainly makes for an iconic corporate positioning.

With this, Access gained entry into the LMD ‘Most Respected Entities’ Hall of Fame (the Top 20), calling the company one of the movers and shakers who climbed up the hill into the honour roll.

It is interesting that the survey, commissioned and conceptualised by LMD and conducted by The Nielsen Company, sampled 800 businesspeople within Greater Colombo to represent a mix of the entities operating within Sri Lanka. The systematic random-sampling technique included telephone interviews conducted with business leaders, managers and executives in Colombo within March and April of 2011.

LMD stated in its special Most Respected Entities in Sri Lanka edition: “One of the fastest-growing corporate entities in Sri Lanka with its core business and growth coming from trading activities infrastructure projects and engineering services, Access represents prestigious international brands in Sri Lanka and Asia in a wide range of business activities… In addition to tapping new opportunities in the emerging markets of the north and east of Sri Lanka, Access Engineering says it is assessing potential of sourcing offshore business opportunities as well. The group, which announced it would be listing this year, is involved in water sector operations in Hambantota and Batticaloa and in rehabilitation projects in the north and east.”

As iterated by LMD, the Access Group of Companies is a conglomerate, with one of the largest portfolios of international principals being represented. Under this umbrella, several companies within the Group have become spearheads and pioneers, proactively leading large scale mega development projects geared at improving national infrastructure.

Access International in two decades since its incorporation has gained an unprecedented reputation of being associated with some of the largest infrastructure development projects, funded by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, JBIC-Japan, SIDA-Sweden, DANIDA-Denmark and ECGD-United Kingdom, etc.

As Chairman Sumal Perera asserts, “Access considers it a great honour and privilege to enter the Top 20 as a first generation business entity within a short time span of just over two decades. This is once again ample proof of the dedication and commitment with which the employees of Access have carried out their duties. We also at the same time realise the responsibility that this type of recognition thrusts on us and I have no doubt that as a company we will dedicate ourselves to act in a manner that justifies this recognition.”

Working on the ethos of building partnerships (both internal and external) one of the key business units of the Access Group, Access engineering hopes to go for a stock exchange listing in the Colombo Stock Exchange in the first quarter of the calendar year 2012, further demonstrating its vision to be a broad-based corporate entity in the forefront of development of its motherland and her people.

Access Engineering, which is a flagship company of the Access Group, remains at the forefront of the civil engineering sector in Sri Lanka with its unmatched expertise in diversified competencies in value engineering that includes turnkey solutions, ranging from design, procurement, construction and commissioning of multi-disciplinary engineering projects across varied sectors.

Being ranked by ICTAD, Sri Lanka’s governing body for the construction industry, as a Specialist Contractor with the highest No. of C1 grading gives the company the ability to be involved in all major civil construction disciplines.

As Perera surmises, “Our achievements thus far would in all probability be more than enough for other companies, but certainly not for us. This is because Access is manned by one of the most dynamic teams in the country, for whom raising the bar is habitual. We will nurture our strengths and improve our competencies, permeating this to strengthen our existing business units, while continuing our aggressive growth plan and injecting the industry with innovative value engineered products and services.”