Back to school

Sammon says setting up shop in Saudi Arabia will be a major challenge.

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School building presents a huge challenge for even the most experienced of contractors. With its tight schedules for completion and detailed design criteria, a typical construction firm would see a school project as one of the most challenging developments across its portfolio.

But for specialist school builder the Sammon Group, constructing educational infrastructure is simply part of its daily routine. Having focused on this sector since the mid-1990s, the company, which is headquartered in Ireland, has developed a wealth of expertise in this industry and a unique capacity to advise education departments within governments.

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Indeed, it was this expert knowledge and experience in the sector that put the Sammon Group in a good enough position to take advantage of Abu Dhabi’s Future School Building Programme.

For founder and CEO Miceál Sammon, winning a third of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) project (Phase 1), the equivalent of five main construction contracts and over 93,000m2 worth of schools, was in fact the company’s biggest achievement in 2010.

“To some extent, our focus on school building has been our saviour during this downturn,” Sammon says confidently.

“In any country where they have an economic downturn, governments put money into the education and medical sectors. This is where we have won out – we have grown our business every year, including the last two years during the recession, because we concentrate primarily on educational and social infrastructure.”

Incidentally, the group had already been working in the UAE well before the downturn. Having been observing the UAE education market for some time, in 2006 company executives decided it was time to be part of this market, and risky as it was, made a bold move.

“We chose the UAE because Abu Dhabi has one of the most ambitious roll-out programmes of education buildings in the world. Firstly, we were working in Dubai, where we delivered about 140,000m2 of schools for private educators. We wanted to establish a regional hub, so we decided to set up our UAE and regional office in Abu Dhabi.”

Asked whether the firm, which also has an office in Tripoli, found it difficult to enter the UAE market, Sammon speaks honestly. “It can be difficult to establish yourself in a new market. There needs to be a pipeline of work, and of your specialism particularly. Even for us, it was a challenge, but once we were able to prove our expertise and credentials, we were welcomed. The reality is that if you have the expertise and you are in the right price bracket, you will win the work.”

And yet, although he is excited about the “tremendous amount” of projects coming online in the UAE at the moment, Sammon is also quick to admit that the current competition remains high. “The education sector in this region is attracting a lot more Western and Middle Eastern companies because there are not as many apartments and commercial buildings being built at the moment, and there is obviously a slowdown in the construction industry generally,” he says. “In the future I feel that it is only going to get more competitive.”