Qatari contractor on the prowl

Black Cat is an established player in the Qatar construction market, having specialised in supporting the development of the local petroleum industry

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Qatar’s home-grown Black Cat Engineering and Construction has been grabbing headlines for all the right reasons.

The company, which began with a small office in Doha and a single portacabin site office in the Dukhan oil and gas field, is today stamping its mark upon many of Qatar’s most ambitious upstream and energy related projects.

The company’s evolution into Qatar’s largest EPIC and maintenance contractor for the upstream oil and gas industry has coincided with quite unparalleled activity in the small Gulf state. Today the company claims a manpower base of over 2500 men and anticipated annual turnover just shy of the US $100 million mark.

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Now it is starting to look around the Gulf, as well as international markets, in the search for more projects to make its mark on.

“We have also begun to properly invest in areas outside our traditional energy remit, in particular civil engineering,” said Adnan Al-Mubarak, the general manager of Black Cat Engineering and Construction.

“Doha will see around $60 - $70 billion worth of rebuilding and civil engineering projects in the coming years.”

“We obviously want to be aligned with those opportunities. Roads, utilities and MEP work is all something we can bring with our background.”

Al-Mubarak has been with Black Cat since 2007 and has presided over a period of significant growth. This period has seen company turnover grow from around 40 million Qatari riyals in 2007 to 450 million riyals in 2009.
 

Like other specialist contractors who have migrated from the demanding field of oil and gas, with its detailed specifications, civil engineering work is something well within the company’s scope. Currently much of the civil work it does is to support other company divisions.

“A lot of our experience in the oil and gas business is geared around the support infrastructure of the massive engineering sites and projects, which have sprung up in Qatar,” said Al-Mubarak.

“In Qatar we have become known for the strength of our technical ability. Trust is a massive issue in Qatar, so once you have fostered that sort of relationship with companies here then life becomes much easier when the big contracts come up.”