“Only a handful of cranes were operating in the desert,” when Alex Mullins joined Al Jaber back in 1982, he recalls. Sure enough, the seven emirates and its most famous, Dubai, are barely recognisable now compared to how they were back then. At the time, Al Jaber was in a joint venture with Hewden Stuart Plant. “Instead of demobilising the equipment back to the UK we found further work locally and quickly built up the fleet as a result of the strong support from the Al Jaber family in the context of the rapidly growing Middle East economy,” says Mullins (pictured).

The company became amicably independent of Hewden Stuart in 1985 and continued its journey towards providing the full range of heavy lifting project services, including marine and overland transportation, to a wide range of blue chip clients extending throughout the Middle East, the Sub Continent and now the Far East.

As the general manager of Al Jaber Heavy Lift (AJHL), Mullins is responsible for developing strategy with the Al Jaber family and managing the AJHL activities at a macro level from the corporate head office in Abu Dhabi.

“The nature of my job has changed over the years as the company has grown. I believe that one of the reasons for the strong growth has been the continuity and commitment of our management team who have taken full responsibility for the implementation of long-term strategic objectives, growing their careers with us in a family atmosphere,” says Mullins. Therefore, “my role has evolved from, for example, business development to the implementation of formal systems and procedures from scratch through to the set-up of training capabilities, ISO 9000 accreditation and IT enhancements to ensure that a homogonous service is consistently provided to our clients at the highest safety standards.“

Mullins points to the job’s “many special and satisfying aspects”, not least the opportunity to work internationally, providing the company’s multicultural workforce with opportunities and guidance to reach their full potential.

“Another satisfying element has been the transition, from being very hands on at the beginning, as is necessary in most start-ups, to maximising the delegation of responsibilities as we have expanded our state-of-the-art fleet geographically and developed our personnel.

“It has been a particular privilege to work closely with our own engineers and Terex Demag for several years in the evolution of our CC 8800-1 Twin crawler capability,” which provides lifting capacities up to 3,200 tonnes and is now a central pillar of the firm‘s growth strategy.

Multi-faceted

The Al Jaber Group is a privately owned, multi-faceted, group of some 30 profit centres ranging from construction to manufacturing and shipping to aviation, whose success is based on controlled growth and diversification under the leadership of the chairman, Obaid Al Jaber. “With a current workforce of approximately 50,000 people and a total asset base exceeding US$4billion, the group is capable of meeting the constantly changing demands of the market by investing in the latest equipment, engineering and information technology,” says Mullins.

He explains, “Al Jaber Heavy Lift specialises in providing a full range of lifting and transportation services from hire and trip basis to the execution of totally engineered and managed ‘factory to foundation’ projects comprising overland and marine transportation and heavy lifting of cargo at site.

“When moving and erecting large or heavy objects there are numerous engineering constraints and challenges to overcome before determining the optimum solution. AJHL provides all the necessary skills and expertise to engineer comprehensive packages, which form the blueprints for the operations and contain all the necessary information to ensure that the work is conducted to the highest possible safety and quality standards.”

Safety

In a region notorious for inferior levels of safety, Al Jaber has “worked hard to develop comprehensive and modular safety and quality documentation to cope with the extreme risks of our marine transportation, overland transportation and erection projects,” says Mullins. “This is now being recognised by our clients and has been well received in the marketplace and provides us with access to a wide range of opportunities in large projects, particularly in the oil and gas, petrochemical and power sectors.”

Al Jaber says that last year it achieved 2.5 million man-hours without a lost time accident. “We are delighted with this achievement which is the result of the combined efforts of AJHL management and staff together with the support and commitment of our customers.” Nevertheless, says Mullins, “we know that as we grow we will have to proactively find new ways to eliminate or, at least, to minimise risks. We are particularly concerned about our exposure in the hire sector where, by definition, we have less control over the use of our assets, particularly in the Middle East, where employing organisations are not yet as well regulated as in other parts of the world. Therefore, we shall continue to intensify our efforts to guide and assist our hire customers in achieving a greater appreciation of the risks involved and the need for preparation which we see as an investment in our future.”

State of the market

“The abrupt slowdown of property development in Dubai has caused a softening of rates in the hire market generally in the area, particularly for small cranes,” says Mullins. However, “we are not yet affected since we primarily offer diversified project transportation and lifting services in other business sectors. Therefore, our order books remain full until well into 2010 due to the long lead times of our target market for which projects started under last year’s capital budgets and more favourable market conditions. We are also confident that due to our wide geographical footprint we can continue our growth strategy by focusing upon economies with growth prospects.”

It’s a refreshingly optimistic outlook. “For us very little has changed and there have been few surprises. Our capex and profitability profile in recent years has consistently grown in line with our strategic and budgetary expectations. We are confident that this will continue whilst we adhere to our well established guiding principle that we do what we promise and safely maximise customer satisfaction.”

Of course, Mullins admits, it is difficult to predict exactly how, where and when the impact of the downturn in the global economy will affect the firm. “We use the same crystal ball as everybody else”, he says. “Nevertheless, in broad terms we would envisage that the most intense downturn effects will take place in Europe and the USA. Therefore, we are comfortable in focusing our attention on the Middle East and Far East regions.

“We constantly strive to improve our safety procedures, training facilities and operational systems documentation. In the event that we find ourselves effected by the ‘economic downturn’ in due course, we shall devote any spare management capacity to this process.”

For the Al Jaber family it is, indeed, business as usual, for example, continued growth and a larger market share; as is encapsulated in its motto: safely onwards and upwards.