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The UAE’s newest engineering consultant firm has already seen many enquiries from clients seeking out the benefits of “boutique engineering” as the region continues to thrive, the two men behind the venture have said.
Mark Whitby and Peyman Mohajer, the respective chairman and managing director of Whitby & Mohajer Engineers, said the week-old company has seen enthusiastic response from former clients of Whitbybird, the UK consultant which where the two men developed their reputation before it was bought by Ramboll in 2007.
“Mark and I are very confident about what we’ve started, and feel a little nostalgic about the early days of Whitbybird when we started in the Middle East,” said Mohajer, in an interview with CW last week.
“The response has been enormous. We’ve been so encouraged from the brand we had here.”
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Whitby was formerly chairman of Ramboll’s UK office, and Mohajer was managing director of Ramboll Middle East. The two men emphasise that the new firm allows them to return to the personalised service possible from a small, nimble operation, and that they would be able to follow clients wherever they were planning projects across the Middle East.
Such approach is an echo of Whitbybird, a firm formed in 1983 which saw rapid growth when it entered the Middle East before the acquisition by Ramboll, a Denmark-based design engineering firm.
“People have picked up on the old brand [Whitbybird] and said: 'You’re back!’” said Whitby. “In many respects it is very exciting. I think what it is that clients are looking for is that – as more and more companies are merging and becoming part of larger companies – is specialist, personalised advice. Where they know who their deadline, who are the owners of the company and who are professional.”
Proximity to clients, and the flexibility to follow clients and appoint the right specialist in-house to each task, will be the backbone to the new firm, currently based in an office district beside Mall of the Emirates in Dubai. These benefits, Mohajer believes, are the reasons that newer, smaller companies can find work in the many opportunities today’s market provides.
“The time for big supermarket engineering is out of the window at the moment as far as the building industry is concerned. So we feel it’s the right move that we create this specialist boutique shop for engineering.”
He added that the company is already working on smaller, fit-out projects and peer-reviews, and that the scope of work would include work across the region, including Iran, Mohajer’s home nation, and Libya.
The pair is in no doubt about the location of their new company, however.
“We see UAE as the hub for the whole region, in terms the infrastructure, for the east-meets-west, you can get quality things here,” added Mohajer.
Read the full interview in the print magazine of ConstructionWeek, to be published soon.
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FEATURED COMMENT
Dear Peyman, All the best for your new business, I am very much confident that you will beat this market.