IT was heartening to hear Forth Ports’ chief executive emphasise this week that, while oil prices were low right now, the company was taking a long-term view in making a record investment at its Dundee facility.

The company on Wednesday unveiled plans for a £10 million expansion of the Port of Dundee, which it believes is the biggest-ever single investment at the site. And Forth Ports’ chief executive, Charles Hammond, revealed the ambition was to double the number of people working at the Port of Dundee to about 1,400 on the back of the investment.

Counting the company’s own staff of about 100 at the Port of Dundee, as well as those employed by tenants and customers, about 680 people work at the facility at the moment.

The investment at Dundee by Forth Ports is being made with an eye on the emerging North Sea oil and gas decommissioning and offshore wind energy markets. But Mr Hammond emphasised Forth Ports was not only targeting decommissioning activity but also aiming to ramp up in coming years the amount of North Sea oil and gas project work going through Dundee.

Many North Sea operators have cut spending on projects in the territory, with the notable exception of major West of Shetland developments, following the tumble in oil prices.

Scottish Gas owner Centrica said yesterday it expected to invest just £500m in new developments in its North Sea-focused exploration and production business in the current year, compared with £728m last year and £1.1 billion in 2014. And it signalled yet more job losses in the North Sea.

Mr Hammond observed North Sea project work “at the moment is depressed because of the oil price”.

However, contemplating the outlook for future North Sea project activity while touching on long lead times in decommissioning and offshore wind energy, he added: “When you make any investment like this, you are not taking a short-term view. You are taking a very long-term view in all these markets.”

It is always refreshing to see a businessman or woman take a step back and consider the long-term position, and broader context.

To state Mr Hammond’s comments are refreshing might seem like a strange observation. After all, surely businesses are generally run with the long term firmly at the forefront of the minds of their top brass?

However, experience has shown that, in the corporate world, a long-term perspective is often sadly lacking.

Short-termism was a very significant factor in the global financial crisis, as the likes of investment bankers chased bonuses with seemingly little or no contemplation of what might happen when the music stopped.

There is also plenty of short-term thinking when it comes to corporate cost-cutting. It goes pretty much as follows: think of a percentage and cut your staff numbers by that proportion to squeeze profit higher.

The problem with this thinking, as with Chancellor George Osborne’s detrimental austerity programme, is that ill-judged cost-cutting tends before long to cut revenues and is thus counter-productive. For a company, in pretty much whatever sector you might choose, sales and consequently profits could suffer as the quality of a service or product declines as a result of reduced staff numbers. With Mr Osborne, austerity has proved a drag on economic growth and tax revenues, weighing on the public finances.

There are various reasons for short-termism in the corporate world: greed, the chasing of badly-framed bonuses, or a lack of experience, patience or long-term memory, to name but a handful.

Meanwhile, at the top of any cycle, people can be lulled into thinking the good times will go on forever. That seems to be what the investment bankers thought.

And it is interesting in this context to observe the renewed surge in house prices in recent years.

The tumble in house prices triggered by the global financial crisis may seem like a distant memory. However, we should realise that the renewed strength of house prices has been fuelled by rock-bottom interest rates, and big UK Government measures.

At some point, when the UK economy is strong enough to take it, base rates will rise from their record low of 0.5 per cent. And overall household debt is high.

Conversely, when people are towards the bottom of a cycle, they fail to realise this is the case. They do not seem to recognise that, in environments that have proven to be cyclical in the past and where there has been no huge structural change, there will eventually be an upturn.

And such upturns can happen fairly quickly, starting at a point when many are thinking things will never get any better. While there are the usual voices claiming we are in a new world when it comes to oil prices, you would imagine the cyclical pattern for crude has not gone away.

Those businessmen and women who will succeed are often those who take bold, but also crucially well-considered, decisions to invest at a time when others are hunkered down.

The Port of Dundee has been doing fine, serving the likes of the agricultural and Scotch whisky sectors and looking forward to benefits likely to flow from major waterfront leisure developments in the City of Discovery. So its owner is investing from a solid position.

But Forth Ports’ investment is nevertheless bold. And it is good to see, in these tough times for the North Sea and broader economy and in a world of too much short-term thinking, the Port of Dundee’s owner investing heavily for the years and decades ahead.