I studied aerospace engineering with a minor in nuclear. Two fields built on the same principle: there is no second attempt. An aircraft cannot be repaired in flight. A nuclear system is designed on the assumption that its own control system will fail, so protection comes in layers and each layer has to hold on its own.
Since then I have worked across sectors that could hardly look more different. Solar design. Oil and gas, at Petrofac. Tunnelling, on a tunnel boring machine — a factory that advances a few metres a day and cannot be pulled back out once it is in the ground. And alongside that, co-founding a venture in aerospace.
They had one thing in common. In every one of them, the machines were designed somewhere else. The specifications arrived from abroad. The drawings arrived from abroad. When something needed changing, we waited.
That is the gap this company exists to close. The UAE builds with extraordinary ambition and imports almost all of the precision machinery that does the building. There is no reason for that to be permanent. The engineering talent is here. What has been missing is the decision to design rather than to purchase.
So we design our own equipment. We choose and verify every component, we have custom parts made to our drawings, and we keep the software in-house. When we sell a machine, we can repair it — because we built it.
We are starting small and deliberately. Our first product is in development, and we would rather it be right than early. What we intend to build over time is a company in this country that does not wait for someone else's specification.
