INTERVIEW ANDREW SEYMOUR Postcard from...


What are you working on at the moment?


Right now, we’ve got a lot of going on, including a couple of key projects. We’ve won one of the main municipality contracts for roads and drainage in the whole of the north of the country. Our client is ASHGHAL, the Public Works Authority, and it’s a five- year framework worth about $90m, which we secured working in a joint venture with a local company, Khatib & Alami. On top of that, we’ve also just heard that we will be developing a masterplan and the complete detailed design for a new national coastguard facility, just north of Doha. It’s a great project with more than 30 buildings including warehouses, offices and accommodation, as well as shooting ranges, football pitches, a museum, Olympic swimming pools – all within a completely self-contained development. And we also have lots of smaller projects where we are providing services such as M&E, structural engineering, and specialist services like fire and safety. All in all we are quite pleased with how things are moving.


DOHA


Andrew Seymour is country director, Qatar for WSP Middle East


How many people do you have out there?


Right now, we have eight people in the country and our growth will be limited to mainly focus on having the client-facing team here and then drawing on the expertise from around the group for different projects. Not only can we tap into the large resource pool of our colleagues in the UAE, but I am also determined to ensure that we will be drawing on skillsets from the WSP group worldwide as well, whether the expertise is in Sweden, India, the US or Hong Kong.


So it sounds like the Qatari market is pretty busy right now?


Absolutely! Qatar is hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup, so instead of speculative construction, they are actually working towards a major milestone event, which is fantastic. This means that from a development point of view the initial focus will be on infrastructure for the next few years.


Once the roads, rail network and other transport systems are in place, then many other items will inevitably springboard from that. For example, the New Doha International airport has already been extended, and now there will also be a major expansion of the Doha port in order to cope with the volume of construction materials that will be required to be imported.


Other major initiatives that we are likely to see in the next five to 10 years are the construction of an extra 85,000 hotel rooms, along with the associated investment in the development of public realm, additional retail and leisure facilities such as golf courses.


My goal for Qatar will be to use our global expertise and hopefully tap into the various different market sectors. Obviously, if we have the capacity within the WSP Middle East group then we will go for some of the lead consultant roles, but initially we are looking to form joint ventures with other companies and carefully considering the clients that we work with.


What’s Qatar like compared with other places you’ve worked?


I’m Canadian, but I started my career in the UK and worked in London, Scotland and all over the Midlands. Then I went back to Canada, and then to the Caribbean – I was in Barbados for seven years – and I’ve now been in the UAE for the last eight years, so the transition from tropical hot to arid hot wasn’t too bad! In terms of how built-up it is, Qatar is a few years behind the UAE but it’s well on its way.


Having been a typical expat for most of my career, the one thing I find about working in all these different countries is that it’s all about people. Whether they’re Canadian, Caribbean or British,


people are people no matter where you are in the world. Everyone likes a good joke, a good meal, and all of the locals are proud of the country they live and work in. Generally, Qatar is a great place to work, as the people are very friendly. Before you get down to business they like to get to know you over a cup of tea or coffee – but actually that’s probably not different to many other places! One thing to always remember here is that Qatar has a very small population, so you soon find out that everyone knows everyone else.


What’s a typical day like for you?


The word I would use is “eclectic”. It changes from hour to hour. One minute you could be dealing with a client, the next resolving technical issues on a project, and the next dealing with IT, procedural or staffing issues, but I can also guarantee that it is always really rewarding – every day you feel like you’ve achieved something!


andrew.seymour@wspgroup.com


SOLUTIONS MARCH 2012

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