At a recent meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, Mike Pukszta was startled when, only minutes into it, everyone seemed to be yelling at each other — in Hebrew. After Pukszta frantically tried to restore order, his interpreter explained that this was normal behavior for an Israeli business meeting.

“For a while everyone yells and then they resolve the issue and shake hands and leave,” said Pukszta, director of the global health care group for St. Louis-based Cannon Design.

Tel Aviv is one of the places that local architectural companies such as Cannon are pursuing new projects — in this case a medical center. Thanks to booming economies and newfound wealth, countries like China, India, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, have become important markets for local architecture and design firms.

Indeed, those countries are expected to account for a majority of all growth in business at the companies. But such growth comes with many challenges, including navigating the maze of cultural norms. Ultimately, finding overseas design projects is about who you know, not what you know, said Jane Ann Forney, project manager and senior associate for St. Louis-based Lawrence Group.

The Chinese have an expression for it: “guan xi,” which in general terms means, “The friend of your friend is my friend,” she said.

Forney was able to get Lawrence Group's first international project in China, the Donglong single-family house development, a little more than three years ago through friends she made working for a previous employer on a different project. From that project, the Lawrence Group's international work has grown into several large-scale developments.

Other companies have similar stories to tell.

“Most of our international work has been fairly serendipitous in nature,” said Kent Turner, Cannon's North American president. “About 98 percent of our work has grown from the seed of one personal relationship in the country.”

Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum was hired to design the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia through its contacts with higher education institutions in the U.S., said Bill Odell, principal in St. Louis-based HOK.

The development will include 2.5 million square feet of laboratory space, a residential development for 25,000 people and classrooms, offices, a computer center and a library.

While connections are good for getting your foot in the door, it is experience that impresses clients in the long run.

“What we bring is the Western ideology,” Turner said. “What we are really exporting is high-end design and leadership talent.”

Countries like India and China have well-educated and trained technicians — architects, engineers and others — who can handle individual components of the developments, Turner said. Companies like his are chosen for large developments because of their expertise in doing complex, multi-use projects.

But doing business in burgeoning countries requires dealing with fickle governments that put up frustrating obstacles. Last year, one Lawrence Group project was derailed because Chinese government officials unexpectedly put a moratorium on houses bigger than 1,000 square feet. The decision halted a large project the company was working on.

“Anyone that didn't have a building permit already had to redo the entire land planning,” Forney said.

Despite the bureaucratic speed-bumps, most projects move at breakneck speed, said Cannon's Pukszta. For example, last year, Pukszta and his team went for what they believed was a marketing presentation to Ratan Tata, the head of the Tata Group. The multinational Indian conglomerate is building a 200-room, state-of-the-art cancer center in Kolkata, India.

The team was hired on the spot.

“They told us groundbreaking would be in five days and we had to tell them where to start building,” Pukszta said.

The team needed to come up with a conceptual rendering and a model of sorts. So the members went scrounging. They bought pencils from the hotel gift shop, sheets of paper from a small street-side store and glue from a different store seven doors down.

“But we couldn't find any foam to build a model,” he said. “We found a guy who sold matchboxes so we bought every one he had and a can of spray paint.”

They cobbled the model together and presented it to Tata along with a couple of “loose renderings,” Pukszta said. “But Tata is a trained architect himself, and he understood what we were trying to do and he loved it.”

Given the need to design large-scale projects in a short amount of time, companies like the Lawrence Group, Forney said, have figured out ways to work around the clock. Most projects are overseen by a U.S.-based team. Every few weeks, U.S. workers fly to the project country to meet with clients and team members there. In between visits, they rely on technology to help them meet the expedited timelines.

“We have an office in China so they work on the project during the day — which is night for us — and then e-mail us what they have been working on,” Forney said. “And we work on it during what is night for them.”

Foreign projects are not a huge portion of most of the companies' portfolio right now. But all three local companies are rapidly adding to their international work force. Cannon expects to increase the number of people working on foreign projects from roughly 60 to 100 by the end of the year.

The company could double that to 200 next year, Turner said.

So far, Forney said, the Lawrence Group has found that foreign clients are willing to spend the extra money for the expertise U.S. companies bring to the projects.

“Maybe that will change eventually,” she said. “For now, they want us there.”

And U.S. companies want to be there. But working in foreign countries also means being sensitive to social and cultural norms.

Doing or saying the wrong thing can seriously offend a potential client, Forney said.

“One of the first things I learned in China is when you present a business card, you present it with both hands and a slight bow. That applies to accepting one as well,” she said. “And you never, ever put a card someone gives you in your back pocket.”

In Saudi Arabia, such norms often revolve around respect for the mosque and Islam and the status of women in the society.

Houses often are segregated by gender, said Daniel Hajjar, vice president and regional manager of Middle East for HOK. Malls in some countries like Saudi Arabia have separate shopping areas for men and women.

In the more liberal Abu Dhabi, Hajjar said, the same concept was tried and failed.

“The common misconception is that all these countries are the same,” he said. “People in the U.S. tend to paint them all with a broad brush, and they are not the same at all.”

If there is a fundamental difference in doing business in the Middle East, Hajjar said, it is what he calls “a certain level of gentility.”

“Business is never purely business in the Middle East. There are times when you go sit with someone and have a cup of tea and not talk any business at all.”

Each company's legal counsel has the job of learning about financial, political, legal and licensing requirements in different countries. They also spend a lot of time and effort learning about cultural do's and don'ts.

Despite best intentions, mistakes happen occasionally, Turner said.

“We have had an occasion or two when someone erred seriously,” he said. “And when they do, we deal with it with sincerity and (an) apology.”