Leader by Design

Keith Hill

Atkins design director: building services Keith Hill explains how the MEP industry in the Middle East is maturing into a more European-type model.

Employed initially by Roger Preston & Partners, Hill came over to the Middle East to work on the Chicago Beach Resort Development, later called the Jumeirah Beach Hotel and Wild Wadi, one of the region’s most iconic developments. But the project for which Hill has the biggest soft spot is as unassuming as the Jumeirah Beach Hotel is famous.

“Obviously many projects stand out due to the great people one has worked with. I think you obviously pick out the big high-rises like the Almas Tower and different projects like The Address, Downtown Dubai. But for me probably the project I have used the most and the one I certainly get the most value out of is the Jumeirah English Speaking School (JESS), because both my boys go there for one thing. It is a great community school and a kind of a model.”

To a certain extent, this reflects the general shift in the construction industry from iconic projects to basic infrastructure. “In terms of Atkins, we want to be the world’s best infrastructure consultant. What do we mean; don’t we do pipes and wires? Put this into context and you realise that Atkins covers so much more than what people perceive, from roads to everything in the built environment.”

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The Jumeirah Beach Hotel marked an auspicious start for Hill in the MEP sector in the region. “It was certainly by far the biggest project in the Middle East. From what I understand, it was the second- or third-largest commercial project in the world at the time. It was a good challenge, and a good experience.” This flagship project was followed by the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which resulted in “a little dip, certainly very minor compared to what happened ten years later.” Hill subsequently returned to the UK to work for Atkins in its London office.

The Middle East market is characterised by shorter timelines, he says. “When you are working here, timelines are more constrained, but things actually get built. So you tend not to have that big lag on a project, whereas in Europe there is quite a lot more prior consultation, which is all good and what should be done. So the industry differs slightly in its approach to major projects.” Hill then returned to the Middle East at the beginning of 2002, which marked the beginning of the most recent and sustained boom period in the construction industry as a whole.

“That year it started edging up and just kept on going ever since. Business was obviously good in the period from 2002 to mid-2008, until it all started to go pear-shaped in the world economy. Up to that point we were delivering some considerable square meterage of projects that we had actually designed, delivered and handed over. That rate of work was sustainable up to a point, but then it just seemed to go through one of those stages where it was driven more by world events than by anything else,” says Hill.

Did the boom period mean that health and safety and build quality were inevitably compromised?

“Certainly not for Atkins; we have always had a very strong health and safety focus. Yes, it does get tailored to the local market in terms of client expectations. We have had a strong health and safety focus since our Chicago Beach days, which set a high benchmark, and I would like to think this is something that has never been degraded over time.” Hill says the construction industry in general in the Middle East has “matured seriously” in terms of health and safety in general. “It is much more respected now, and the statistics are good, which is as it should be.”

As for the latest buzzwords of sustainability and green building, Hill says Atkins interprets this as Carbon Critical Design (CCD), which is an Atkins trademark, along with the strapline ‘Plan Design Enable’. “That is really what we are focused on, and it probably puts it into slightly more context for people, because sustainability is such a huge, all-encompassing statement. I think it is such a broad statement because it means different things to different people.

Client focus

“It is great to get people motivated, but then it needs to be tailored. It is almost as if there are just too many good ideas. They are all good stuff, but which one should the client focus on, particularly at a property level?” This is where CCD comes into its own. “It has certainly proven useful, and has provided good momentum,” says Hill. Atkins is working on high-level carbon-critical planning tools at present, which will ultimately lead to design and then operational tools.

“We have not gotten quite that far yet. It is a whole suite, all driving to the same point of everyone becoming really conscious of building energy management.” Has this new focus, in turn, added another level of complexity to MEP? “I think there is a level of complexity with everything we do in terms of engineering. However, most of it derives from the relatively straightforward starting point of what the end user needs.”

If all these boxes are ticked, says Hill, then a proper scope of works can be defined. “Only then can you actually deal with getting the building form right and addressing functionality through space. However, more important than anything else is whether or not people can use the space. It is all about people.” Initially this plays very strongly into the hands of the architect, “but it has huge overlaps with the engineering sector. All that is basic stuff, and you have not designed anything yet. It is just about the underlying thought processes.”

It is only at this stage that one “can start looking at how the process follows ‘good’ or ‘better’ engineering. It is not a case of saying we are not good engineers; it is a case of saying just check what you are doing and where you are going, and whether or not you can introduce anything that might be better without going over the top. You are just relooking at your basic fundamentals in terms of the end user, which is always where you are coming from, as opposed to the next step, which is energy recovery.”