The human touch

Drake & Scull International PJSC chief corporate affairs officer Zeina Tabari
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The latest trends in the MEP sector are consolidation and diversification, both strategically and geographically. But what exactly is involved in acquiring other companies, and undertaking projects in other regions?

Like most companies, DSI started out small. “When we started in the UAE – remember DSI in the GCC started in 1966 in Abu Dhabi and then moved to Dubai in 1976 – we started with 50 people. I remember one of the projects which we worked on was the Chicago Beach Resort (now known as Jumeirah Beach Hotel). At that time there were not a lot of recruitment agencies, so hiring for that project was a challenge,” says Tabari.

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“We probably had a staff of about 50 people at that time. Today, incorporating all of the DSI companies, including Passavant-Roediger and DSI Kuwait and DSI Qatar, we are approximately 15,000 strong. And with the two Saudi acquisitions that are coming up at the end of the year, which include one MEP company and another civil contracting company, we will have a workforce of about 20,000 to 22,000. One of the companies has about 7,000 people and the other one has around 2,000 people.” So how does DSI go about acquiring another company?

“We initially begin the process by strategically identifying a company and looking at their resources. Is it an MEP, civil contracting or IWP company? Over the last year we have managed to buy two MEP companies, so we have a good idea of exactly what kind of resources they would have. We would then assess the first-line management. We start with the area, financial and operational managers, as they are the three critical roles.

“We then move on to the departmental managers. We in the corporate office have functional reporting, so every person in the area reports to someone else in corporate. So human resources in Abu Dhabi and Qatar all report to human resources in the corporate office, just to make sure that all of the policies and procedures, recruitment methodologies and selection processes are consistent. This also ensures we all use the same suppliers and vendors, so firstly you can take advantage of the volume of work, and secondly that the overall quality is the same.”