Today’s visits began with AECOM’s professional services arm where we learned some of the history of Dubai’s development including a copy of a document which was the original contract for the Dubai International Airport and another primary bridge. The contract was dated in 79 and was only two pages long, one in English and one in Arabic. In the bidding processes, we talked about how projects are equally weighted on their technical as well as financial merit and what prevents engineers from achieving success in upper management.
Our next stop was SS Lootah, originally a construction company which had diversified into natural gas, Islamic banking, health care, education, hospitality and others.
SS Lootah started the first Medical and Pharmaceutical school for girls (not women… There is a cultural distinction in the meaning of the words – calling a female a woman usually implies a married woman). There was a bit of scandal as some of the gentlemen in our group shook hands which they weren’t supposed to do, but caught themselves fairly quickly. Generally, there have been very few cultural hiccups as Dubai’s culture (especially in the expat zones) so closely mirror our own.
With my experience in Malaysia, I was particularly interested to hear about what they were doing in in their Hospitality arm where they had opened Shariah compliant hotels. Shariah compliance implies:
- Halal food
- No alcohol on premises
- Visitors not allowed to meet guests in room
- Separate allocations
- 2.5% profits shared in accordance with “Zakat”
- Only use Islamic banks
- Private room to eat for families (women with full veils) that have women servers only.
Lunch at SS Lootah was a sumptuous Middle Eastern buffet spread presented to us by their hospitality arm before they took us on a tour of their subsidiaries: Dubai School of Medicine for Girls, Dubai School of Pharmacy for Girls and the Technical Institute.
After our tour of the major SS Lootah facilities, we hopped back onto the bus to visit the Chairman Salem Lootah. When we arrived, we were formally greeted by the chairman and his son the CEO who acted as a translator for us. It was certainly an absolutely captivating meeting. The Chairman is allegedly worth billions of dollars (as the tour of his facilities would suggest). Yet our discussion didn’t revolve around business but rather studies and family and his philosophy on life. It was an incredible discussion and generated a lot of chatter on our ride to Sharjah.
At Sharjah, we visited the American University in Dubai and spoke with Rotman Alumni and current professors about their vision of the school not just in and of itself, but rather the implications that it had on the future of Dubai and its role in preparing UAE Emirati for the future.
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