Guest blog post by Paul Doherty, President and CEO, The Digit Group, Inc.

Over the past few years, the Digit Group has expanded business opportunities globally through the vehicle of U.S. Department of Commerce Foreign Trade Missions.

In March 2013, the Digit Group was introduced to the Jeddah Economic Company (JEC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during the U.S. Department of Commerce Middle East Infrastructure Trade Mission.  Because of this introduction, we were awarded a contract to use our Smart Cities technology for their Kingdom Tower/Kingdom City development.  Our contract with JEC has expanded over the past few months to include a new role as Master Architect for the design of Kingdom City as a Smart City. The Smart City will use technology as the basis of design. Such technologies will include self-driving cars that function as the mass transportation system.

Currently, we are planning to also be the Master Builder for the city as a modular constructed city.  Logistically, we are engaging a Chinese building manufacturer in Beijing to modularly fabricate all the buildings in factories in China and ship the components to be put in place at Kingdom City at 20% below budget and in half the time scheduled, with zero defects.

Due to our recent selection as a delegate for the Joint U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Energy Smart City-Smart Growth Presidential Trade Mission to China, our joint Sino-American venture is now being replicated in Malaysia.  A Chinese real estate developer, with ties to the Chinese Government, called us weeks before the start of the Mission after conducting research on the selected delegates of the Mission.   The representative explained that they would like to explore using our Master Architect/Master Builder services for the Malacca Gateway Smart City development.

We had members of our Hong Kong office travel to Malaysia and walk through the site in April.   After our successful review of the site, we signed a MOU on April 14, 2015 to be the Master Architect/Master Builder of the project. The official signing ceremony is scheduled to occur in mid-June 2015 in Malaysia.  Due to our involvement with a U.S. Department of Commerce Trade Mission, another successful project has emerged that utilizes another Sino-American venture.

In addition to our large-scale Smart City projects, we are also planning to use our joint Sino-American venture model to provide innovative Smart City solutions like our Strawberry Tree solar powered charging and WiFi stations and solar scooters to India and the global marketplace.

We are thankful to the Department of Commerce and Secretary Pritzker for working with us to build business opportunities abroad.  Their dedicated Foreign Commercial Service and trade missions create global expansion opportunities.