Leveraging change

Charles Lever, MEP director, Drake & Scull International PJSC (DSI)

New incumbent Lever garnered extensive building services or MEP experience at contractor/developer Taylor Woodrow in the UK, where he was instrumental in instituting a policy of collaborative partnership. Lever says such an approach is in line with DSI’s own strategic goals, and the MEP sector in the UAE in general, “where there are developments here that are on a par with the quality and complexity of those that I worked on in Europe. Therefore we have a great opportunity to implement best practice in the MEP sector here that takes into account the best of both worlds.”

The MEP sector in the UAE is currently in an ideal position to look at nurturing a best-practice culture, adds Lever. “The UK is definitely the more challenging business environment at present, and is really down compared to a year ago. In comparison, the sector over here is far more stable, and there are still opportunities available. Our challenge at present is to take advantage of these opportunities, and to formulate an all-encompassing growth strategy to take us forward.”

Indeed, DSI has been adapting and responding to changing market conditions since it was established originally in Abu Dhabi in 1966 and in Dubai in 1974. “DSI has been here a long time, and throughout its history has changed quite regularly as to how it conducts its business, and improving, adding to its core strengths in recent years in the form of civils and infrastructure, water and power (IWP).

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“Our growth has paralleled that of Dubai. Over the years, of course, we have seen phenomenal growth here. It is certainly my opinion that Dubai has led the whole region in terms of development. This year alone we have seen the completion of the Burj Dubai, and we are looking forward to seeing that in all its glory, and the launch of the Dubai Metro.

Pride
“I think it is when we look at these kinds of projects in the region that we can all feel extremely proud to be in a sector that is leading the world in many ways. That is where we intend to take ourselves as a business: as leading the region and beyond in MEP,” asserts Lever. This is no ideal boast either, as “DSI has some of the best engineers and people on-site I have seen anywhere. We are well-respected as a brand, and as a superior MEP engineering company that delivers quality projects on a cost-efficient and on-time basis, moving forward with our successful clients.”

Lever says “there is no doubt that the financial constraints in the market in the past year or so have hit the majority of businesses. In my mind, companies with a strong financial underpinning have continued to grow, and can look forward to a healthy future.” In this regard, DSI’s successful IPO came to fruition with excellent timing, and was soon oversubscribed.

“We realised a large amount of capital that has allowed us to invest in growth. This has helped us move through this recent period relatively unaffected, and enabled us to continue growing.” However, despite its ongoing success, DSI has always adopted a considered and measured approach to its own future. Lever says it is continually assessing its own strengths and opportunities, including taking a long hard look at its main business stream itself, namely the MEP sector itself.

Constraints
“MEP was traditionally a core business, but this is changing. It currently represents over 50% of our turnover, and the civils and IWP business streams sharing the balance. We see the balance shifting to take into account the large number of infrastructure projects out there. The focus of the MEP sector itself has moved from residential and commercial to hospitals, schools and airports, for example. This presents an opportunity to engage our company’s entire engineering and construction capability, to which we are very well suited. “If we were to just stay in MEP, perhaps as a business we would be more constrained than we would really want to be. What we need to do is look at business streams to complement MEP and help it grow. Hence IWP was started, and is extremely successful, delivering some of the largest district cooling plants in the region. We have gained some excellent experience in that field to date,” says Lever.