"Our outfit developed by doing busi ness with American companies, and their know-how has brushed off onto our shoulders," says Jose Mendoza Fer nandez, 42, director of Bufete Industri al, Mexico's leading engineering firm.
He has a point. By borrowing a U.S. en gineering technique of offering clients "total package deals," Bufete has virtu ally cornered the Mexican engineering market while taking a lot of business away from U.S. competitors. Bufete currently has in the works $206 million in contracts, many of them for U.S.-owned subsidiaries operating south of the border.
Mendoza learned his Yankee savvy at the National University of...