Stacking up

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Global architect practice RMJM has been in the UAE for 38 years. Director Nick Haston tells Arabian Business why, despite the bad times, the firm is here to stay.

This doesn’t look like a city that is in trouble,” says Nick Haston, gesturing with a long sweep of his hand from his office window 27 storeys up towards Dubai’s rush-hour traffic.

True, as Dubai bustles on a brilliantly clear early autumn day, the long lines of traffic seem reminiscent of the boom of 18 months ago. Today, from here, Dubai certainly doesn’t look like a place that has been ravaged economically.

That said, over the course of the next hour, it will become increasingly apparent why Haston, the director of global emerging markets for international architect firm RMJM, defends the emirate.

His company, which is as responsible as any Western architectural practice is for Dubai’s glittering, high-rise skyline, has invested heavily in the UAE. (It has close to 300 people in its Dubai office and is currently working on two major projects in the UAE.) And it has no intention of winding down its operations, despite a devastating recession that has seen billions of dollars worth of real estate projects cancelled or delayed, and unpaid contractor bills stack up because developers have simply run out of cash.

Haston is realistic about Dubai, and admits while the recovery will be slow, his firm is here for the long haul.

“People are deluding themselves if they think it will go back to the peaks of what it got to,” he says candidly.

“It will take time. Whether it is two, three, four or five years, it will take time. Anyone who is considering business in Dubai has got to have that length of outlook,” he adds.

“It’s very easy in business to invest somewhere and, then, when the market changes, to pull out and leave that investment behind. We’re here to stick through all of that and we don’t want to see the investment of 30-odd years taken away. If it takes five years, we will be here.”

It seems RMJM’s attachment to the UAE runs on a profound emotional level as well as a commercial one. The private Edinburgh-based firm, which has grown from a tiny practice founded in 1956 to an architectural behemoth with offices in Istanbul, Singapore and Shanghai, first came to the UAE 38 years ago. It is proud of its work in the emirates — in helping Dubai literally rise from the desert floor. Much is riding on their Middle East business (they also have an office in Abu Dhabi employing around 50 staff).

Unsurprisingly, Haston says business is ‘slow’ and well down on last year. But far from cutting back, the company is looking to beef up its presence across the Middle East.

It has identified five growth markets in the MENAT (Middle East, North Africa and Turkey) region and is to set up offices in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Libya and Turkey.

“In February, when Dubai had fallen off a steep curve, we decided we could go down one of two routes. We could retrench and reduce our numbers here or we could get on the front foot and look to see what opportunities we could take from the market,” Haston says.

This strategy was spearheaded by Haston, who came to out to Dubai six months ago to oversee the expansion of the business in the region.

“Rather than looking primarily into the UAE, we have started to look outside it, while maintaining our roots here,” he adds.

Oman and even Iraq are also markets RMJM is considering, although Haston admits the latter is ‘high risk’. Despite this, the company is in early stage talks with potential architectural partners in Iraq.

“It’s a very interesting market. The country has had significant professional and architectural grounding —if you look at Iraq in the 50s, 60s and 70s it was boom market,” he explains before adding that RMJM have also looked at Afghanistan.

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