I’d expect more kinetic action from any company associated with the shrewd Mr Habtoor…. Labouring over the idle cranes across the road

We rented a second car for this week. Not a big issue, we have a good relationship with a local supplier, goes back over 3 years now.

Diamondlease (a Habtoor Group company) has been a trusted partner of ours for most of our life in the UAE.

Yes, the Lancer we often get for the second vehicle is a ‘dog of a car’ but the Mitsubishi Mirage I’ve had for months is a snazzy little set-of-wheels.

The staff are helpful, courteous and know us by our names. Happy.

Much less happy I’m about the centre-piece of the view from my balcony, a farce of motionless cranes strangely stationary within the bustle of the rejuvenated Dubai city. (see pictures);

Yes, I’ve written previously about the Habtoor Leighton Group’s stagecraft known as the Dubai Pearl, an ambitious iconic project that is enjoying a Sleeping Beauty type of a slumber party at the moment, half-or less completed, possibly waiting for a new ‘prince of an investor’.

A sad little gathering of construction machinery guards the naked structure, frozen in time, also waiting for a more fulfilling working future.

There were many readers that found my musings over this trivial issue below their threshold of tolerance for my liking to dither over the insignificant facets of this mega-industry, I work in.

Some voiced their concerns, others just switched off.

Fully respecting their right to do any of those two actions described above, as well as hanging around for another lot of mulling over the inconsequential, I am sad to need to report that the cranes are still as they were a week ago, or 2 or 5 or maybe even 50;

Can’t go back in time to a fix point of a year or more ago, as the view from our home was significantly different than then is now.

Granted, that even at that time I had a slightly obsessive interest in the activities of the company that is in charge of this site too (Habtoor Leighton Group).

I was a bit more interested in the idle workforce then, inactive cranes were less of my worry.

Maybe it is a good sign that I can now afford to be mulling over this matter, day in and day out, slowly watching as time passes over the make-believe story of a successful HLG.

There could be much less enjoyable pastimes than enjoying the sun set over the horizon in this pretty city, so I should stop complaining.

And I would, if it was not for the head-splitting conundrum that the theory poses for me, that of the highly successful, palace building Mr Habtoor is giving his blessing to this continuous charade.

There could be, of course, at least two other explanations for the Habtoors en masse to give their blessing for this negligent (mis)use of construction plant, either the client is paying market rates for them doing nothing or they are not real cranes at all, just very hardy, cardboard-made props that have lasted the last year-or-so of this playhouse of false advertising.

If either of these is the case, Mr Habtoor outplayed me there with his cunning business skills, yet again.

 

Today’s sunset and Two full pictures of the site in question taken a month apart in March and April 2014

Some examples of misguided uses of shareholders’ funds for dubious promotional purposes by Balfour Beatty’s Gammon and Leighton’s HLG

I sit on my balcony, wondering:

Do construction cranes have feelings? Do they get lonely, depressed?

Sad for being underappreciated and under-utilised, reduced to the dumb role of a piece of a stagecraft?

Frozen in a set position for months, decorated by signs, lit up at night, guarding over an unfinished building, enviously eyeing their brothers on the other side of Sheik Zayed’s road, busily pulling up yet another tower, in front of their weary eyes.

There are probably at least a dozen cranes on the abandoned – or diplomatically labelled – temporarily suspended, Dubai Pearl construction site.

They’ve been sitting there, idle for months now, if not a full year, some clever chap having decided it to be a good move to keep them there, nicely spaced out; such a prime location cannot be ignored for marketing purposes.

Or maybe they just have no new jobs to go to, even temporarily while the troubled project gets its funding sorted and restarts?

Some 6000km to the East their not-so distant relatives have been having a slightly more exciting life.

In February Gammon, Leighton’s JV partner on a number of high profile projects in Hong Kong held their annual Spring Dinner.

Probably not considered a luxury by the company, just a run of the mill entertainment for the loyal employees and some VIPs.

Sure, the ‘airline-industry’ themed party did not lack on flamboyance, trust the marketing department to go all nine yards to make every detail, just right. From the entry ‘fake screening gates’ via the make-believe boarding card tickets to the buttons on all of the VIPs uniforms, things were shiny, in style and grand.

Still, what would have interested the mishandled cranes from the Dubai story more than any other bling, would have been the role a concrete truck had to play at the party.

Not only was it lovingly cleaned (if not entirely new), polished and decorated with a lovely pink horse for the occasion but also parked in the middle of one of the halls in the Asia World Expo.

Candy saw to it that the well appreciated vehicle had the best view of the event.

I should probably feel honoured if any/many of my loyal readers got all the way through here, without giving up on this post and/or labelling me as someone that has ‘finally lost it’.

That maybe so, I’d caution anyone against jumping into conclusions too hastily.

Not my perceived fragile state of mind, nor even my well documented feelings of distrust against these companies should distract from the fact, that the management of these entities have still not found their way of steering the companies into long term stability, if anything, they are the ones ‘losing it’.

One may rightly wonder how could I be reaching such a harsh conclusion based on two, relatively benign incidents of careless use of petty cash, that I have remotely observed?

I can and I do.

Because, these are only the tips of the icebergs of ‘management by arrogance’ practices employed by these two construction ‘giants’ – and on these icebergs  I’ll keep on reporting.

For my own sanity, the future of the AEC and for those poor cranes across the road.

First picture from here

http://cofico.com.vn/en/company-news/522-hoat-dong-kdnm-2014-trangchu.html

Second, my own.