Smart ALEC

Kez Taylor, ALEC Managing Director.
[More Images]

RELATED ARTICLES: Alec voted best contractor | ALEC bags $912mn DTCD job | ALEC awarded US $707 million Veneto contract

In the ascent of Dubai and Abu Dhabi’s building markets over the last decade Al Jaber LEGT Engineering & Contracting (ALEC)’s building business grew from almost nothing to a US$1 billion company.

Winning its first contract in January 2002 for the Mina a’ Salam complex – commissioned by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, no less – the company and its managing director, Keiron ‘Kez’ Taylor, haven’t looked back, except perhaps to marvel at the dramatic decade just gone.

“We’ve been through the two extremes: a massive boom whereby the only restriction was your capacity – whatever it was, you could perform at that level – to an extreme where you are consolidating where it’s a tight market,” says Taylor in the company’s office in Dubai Industrial City.

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Congratulations to Mr Kez and his team for this amazing success.   4 Comments Read more comments »

ALEC has another office in Abu Dhabi, and Taylor points out that the more challenging market conditions in the region’s contracting markets has resulted in a ‘huge shift’ in business from the former to the latter. But when it comes to some of the company’s projects – in particular the AED 4.5 billion contract to build the third concourse for Dubai International Airport – calculating the work split between the two emirates is not so straight forward.

“The airport is a huge job in terms of resource, and we have a lot of people here working on it. With that project the split in business is about 60% Dubai and 40% Abu Dhabi in terms of work, value and turnover,” he says. “If we didn’t have it, it would be a totally different mix – I’d say 80 or 90% of business based in Abu Dhabi. There has been a huge shift towards Abu Dhabi.”

Alec’s construction business has produced some large and eye-catching projects. Its growth and attraction to developers has allowed it to work on major projects across the two emirates in retail, airports, hotels as well as high-rise buildings.

This has included work on hotels and golf clubs on Saadiyat Island and Yas Island in the capital, both the Abu Dhabi and Dubai international airports, the Dubai Marina mall and the ambitiously green Mirdiff City Centre, and the multi-purpose Madinat.

The company was forged through a joint venture between Al Jaber Group and Grinaker-LTA, a multi-disciplinary construction firm in South Africa. After a few years Al Jaber bought out the shares from Grinaker-LTA and offered 20% of them to what is now the current management.

But Cape Town-bred Taylor and around 8% of the staff retain the connection to South Africa. Graduating in construction management in University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg, Taylor’s association with Grinaker-LTA began with a bursary at the firm. The company’s joint venture with Al Jaber took him north east in October 2001, to Dubai, to help set up the construction division of Alec.

Within three months, the company had snapped up that all-important mandate from Dubai’s ruler.

As he looks back now on that first project, he smiles: “We couldn’t fail, we had to succeed! That was the first project and it was a very quick programme. We had to building it in 17 months in time for a conference and we successfully did that.”