Eastern promise

• Features

• 27/11/2015

With an estimated 15 per cent of the Earth’s oil reserves and perhaps the highest GDP per capita in the world, there seems little that can halt Qatar’s insatiable growth. InAVate investigates what this wealth of opportunity means for the AV industry…

When two Texas University graduates established Techno Q 12 years ago, Doha was unrecognisable from the sprawling metropolis visitors see today. A long period of sustained growth has provided the pair with massive opportunities in the audiovisual installation market.

Following their studies in Mechanical Engineering, Zeyad Al Jaidah and Abdulla Alansari, began the business as a home theatre specialist. Now Techno Q is active in the audiovisual, lighting, security, fire and IT arenas and has around 200 major projects under its belt. According to managing director, Zeyad Jaidah, the 140 strong company is “very, very busy”.

“Qatar is being developed extremely quickly and we are involved in most of the major projects here. We were established in 1995, long before the boom, which I think has been a huge advantage for Techno Q.”

The country has witnessed rapid growth based on rich reserves of natural gas and oil, with Zeyad Jaidah pinpointing 2007 as the year when development really started to take off. At the same time the company started to get involved with the bigger projects that were increasingly on offer. By 2000 he said the company was picking up huge education projects such as universities.

But oil was discovered in Qatar early in the twentieth century, why the sudden boom in 2007?

“Firstly the increase in oil prices and secondly the political stability of our country,” Zeyad Jaidah answers. “A huge part of the country’s success has come from the vision of our leader. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa is a visionary person. He wants to grow this country, especially in the educational and cultural sector. Many museums are being built in Qatar, for example the Museum of Islamic Art is a really, really big project and very important for us.”

Although Qatar does welcome a few tourists each year the country does not pull in as many recreational visitors as Dubai but, nevertheless is a popular stopover for flights to Asia. However, the country has plans well under way to bolster the its cultural and entertainment offerings. This is creating huge opportunity for professional installation companies.

“Doha is enriching its offer in regards to culture and entertainment. A cultural village is being constructed where concerts and other stage performances will be held. There is also a considerable drive behind the convention centre and strong investment in healthcare.

“All these new projects will be hugely important for us, we are talking to the developers and keeping a very close eye on their progress,” said Zeyad Jaidah.

So all seems well in Qatar, a far cry from the threat of recession and economic turmoil that has been felt across Europe and America in recent months. Whilst Zeyad Jaidah cannot see anything to halt Qatar’s growth any time soon he’s also not making any bold comments.

“We are not bullet proof. Because we are a small country with a very high GDP hopefully we are going to be safer than other parts of the world. Of course if parts of the western hemisphere experience long term problems with their economies it will affect us.

“Right now I think the only thing that threatens growth here is political instability, especially if there are problems with our neighbour Iran. Hopefully nothing is going to happen, but if something did happen and the passage from the Gulf waters to the ocean is blocked then we cannot export oil. This will hurt us, this will hurt the whole world.”

But for now all the signs are good.

“I would say we are at maybe 20 or 30 per cent of our peak in terms of growth. There are still so many possibilities that are being discussed. A bridge between us and Bahrain, a bridge between us and the UAE. I think these bridges will flourish business on both sides.”

Zeyad Jaidah continues: “There is huge demand for kitting out meeting rooms and we have a lot of projects related to universities. We install a lot of screens, projectors, rear projection units and video conferencing systems.

Security is also a strong market in Qatar.

“For us, security is picking up very slowly. We are not a very early player in the security industry and there are many other companies that are very well established so we don’t pick up the big projects yet.

“CCTV, security and fire is a market we are expanding into, it is of course a very big market, every building has security systems. There are many, many players in this field we must just compete with them.”

So lots of opportunity, lots of work, but who installs all these systems? “Labour is mainly imported,” says Zeyad Jaidah before correcting himself.

“It is always imported for the time being. The demand for skilled manpower is extremely high. The population of Qatar two years ago was maybe 700,000 people. Today as we speak it is 1.5 million. In one and a half years we have doubled the population.”

This has had a huge effect on inflation, which is currently reported to be running at 16.5 per cent.

“Employees can get really good opportunities here because the demand is very high. Will this change in the near future? I don’t see it, not in the near future especially if the growth sustains the demand is still going to be here and the locals only number around 200,000.”

However, education is a strong priority for Qatar and citizens enjoy free instruction from kindergarten to university. But Zeyad Jaidah doesn’t feel that this will create a pool of skilled, home-grown engineers to work in the audiovisual market.

“In the universities each class is very small, maybe 15 people. This is great for the students who are sharing excellent facilities with very few classmates, but it does mean that the number who graduate each year is only around 200.

“On top of that oil and gas is the most important industry here. So anybody who studies engineering or any kind of technical studies will be trained by the oil and gas industry. Many of the international companies are here and they will pay huge salaries because they have massive contracts and obligations.

“On most of our big projects I would prefer to have 20 or 30 more skilled people. We have a large turnaround with employees as well. Sometimes we are so desperate that we say okay maybe we could manage with a lower skill level than is required. But when we are faced with bigger problems we are forced to change that person.”

In conclusion, the audiovisual industry in Qatar is growing rapidly, with more opportunity than can be handled.

“I admit we are not are not covering the market and that is simply because it is so big. There are areas we are not particularly active in, such as systems for houses and apartments. We are focussing on big universities and museums. There is a great future, I do believe, massive expansion and new projects all the time, such as the airport. This opportunity will remain as long as we retain political stability.

And is this likely? “The world’s energy lies beneath us. The world cannot afford to have instability in the region. It cannot happen, nobody would allow it – not the east, not the west.”