The founder of Albert Speer and Partners (AS&P) was in Doha to give the keynote speech for the CW Qatar conference Building Towards 2022. Despite a gruelling day in the spotlight, Speer was spritely and good-humoured, and eager to talk at length about his background and his firm’s key role in Qatar’s World Cup plans.
“We developed a new field of activity in doing bid books for large sporting events. Every year there is a sports fair in a city, in connection with the international Olympic committee. We decided to display our Olympic competitions in a small booth at the sports fair in Canada.
“Members of the Qatari government visited us and a quarter of a year later we got an email and a call saying ‘please come to Qatar, we would like to talk to you’. And then we were chosen and we did a good job. I am very proud of that bid book. The client’s aim was to have the best bid book given to FIFA and this is what we, together with our partners including Arup and Nusli, managed to do.”
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