In 15 minutes with Ibrahim Jaidah, Managing Director of Qatar’s Arab Engineering Bureau, Jeff Roberts learns about psychology, Ali Baba and camels in the North Pole
We keep hearing how Qatar continues to develop quite rapidly. Given the economic climate, is this an accurate statement?
IJ: Development in Qatar is very interesting. Despite the economic crisis that is happening around the globe, Qatar has sustained impressively.
Whether you’re talking about the projects or the psychological aspect, Qatar has responded very well to the crisis.
We haven’t heard much about any projects stopping completely. Once in a while we hear that projects may have been pushed to other sites or been renegotiated but, for the most part, it’s business as usual here. As far as things at AEB, we’ve been signing contracts and moving forward.
Psychological aspect?
IJ: Not just in the Gulf but across the world, the psychological effect of the financial crisis has had a very negative impact. This has slowed down construction, halted projects and created chaos in the market. The government of Qatar has handled this very carefully. It is trying to reassure people that things will be ok. It has just announced the budget for this fiscal year and it’s larger than in previous years. They’re discussing new projects and awarding contracts at a steady rate. All of that helps to instil confidence in the private sector.
In your opinion, what makes Qatar different in this respect?
IJ: A few years ago, we used to complain that there wasn’t as much development in Qatar as in other places around the region, it was a steady growth then and it continues to be so today. The difference here is that it’s healthy growth—the projects aren’t over-leveraged; it’s all realistic; it’s all solid money. That’s why it’s sustaining.
AEB, for example, has been designing some huge jobs recently—things that are around US $200 million and above. And, after whatever happened with the world economy happened, I assumed the clients would tell me to wait or postpone the project. Instead, they’re pushing us to turn the designs around faster because they know they’re going to get the best deals. And, that only reflects that it’s solid, genuine money that is available.
Can you give any specifics about what AEB is working on?
IJ: In terms of hospitality, we just finished the Al Sharq Hotel, which is a Ritz-Carlton resort. With that project we won the Arab Cities Award. We also just finished the Al Fardan Twin Towers, which consist of luxury retail and very high-end residences. We are very close to finishing the Al Fardan Residences as well. That is a 62-storey residential tower that comprises even more high-end residential space. Al Fardan will be announcing the operator of this tower very soon. All I can say is that it is a very well-known, very fancy operator.
We also won a design competition for the Al Saad project, which is worth around 1.2 billion Qatari riyals. It’s a mixed-use development that will include retail, hotel, commercial and residential space. It’s being built just across the street.
I’m particularly excited about a business park project that is under tender right now. It’s a very contemporary mixed-use development. After four months of discussion, we managed to convince the planners to change the regulations to allow for residential units along the street and commercial areas deep within the development.
Traditionally, they’ve always lined the streets with commercial and put the residential behind it. It’s really the first time that there has been an interesting attempt at an office park in Doha.
We also do quite a lot of retail projects. There are a lot of malls coming up. A lot of the clients want to do them in Italian or French styles but I’ve tried to convince them that we have many interesting stories of Ali Baba and Sinbad the Sailor. I was able to convince them and so now we’re moving forward with very Arabic-themed spaces. We’re doing one of those in Sharjah and one in Qatar.
We’ve also done several of Qatar’s embassies in countries throughout the world.
Building embassies must come with its own set of challenges.
IJ: For embassies, the state of Qatar requires that they must reflect a Qatari vernacular regardless of where they are in the world. Doing an embassy in Malaysia, for example, would still include the Qatari vernacular, but we would do it with a contemporary twist. In the case of the embassy in Kuala Lumpur, we tried to blend it with the mood of the local culture and architecture as much as we can.
We also used a different approach in Ankara. In Qatar, we are used to flat pieces of land but in Ankara we had a difference of 14 metres on the site—and it snows there. It was very exciting to see the Gulf wind tower and Arabian arches amidst the snow. I showed these pictures to the officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and they were shocked. It’s like seeing a camel in the North Pole.
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