Jafza International has named Clint Murphy its engineering principal in charge of North American operations and has sent him to Charleston to establish the Dubai-based firm's first formal project office in the United States.
The stateside entity is now formally known as Jafza South Carolina LLC.
Murphy, 43, spent two years in the United Arab Emirates working as principal in charge of Dubai operations for Applied Technology and Management on several waterfront, infrastructure and transportation-related projects undertaken by the government and Island Global Yachting, an international marina development company.
Last month, Jafza selected ATM to serve as project manager for its development of a massive logistics, distribution and manufacturing center on roughly 1,325 acres in Orangeburg County's Global Logistics Triangle.
Murphy will oversee ATM's work as well as the anticipated development of a network of similar sites throughout the United States and Canada.
Jafza expects to break ground on the site in either late 2009 or early 2010. Jafza anticipates its first corporate tenants in Orangeburg in 2011.
Members of Jafza's Dubai-based marketing team visited South Carolina and the Orangeburg site in the past month, and are beginning to formulate a marketing strategy geared toward getting at least some of the 6,500 international companies currently doing business in Dubai's Jebel Ali free trade zone to open facilities here.
Jafza is striving to steer as much business as it can to companies already in South Carolina.
The project management team has also drafted a policy on minority participation in projects.