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Socio-economics
Understanding the constantly changing social, political and economic landscape in the GCC and Africa is a cornerstone of decision making.
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January, 2023
Birth of a Green economy
October, 2022
Tick... tick... tick… BOOM!
June, 2022
The Supply-Demand Dance
April, 2022
Cancel the Crises
January, 2022
The Green Year
October, 2021
Flight of the Falcon
July, 2021
The Construction Triathlon
April, 2021
The Construction Life-LINE
January, 2021
21 Reasons Why Construction Will Rebound in 2021
December, 2020
Grounded
November, 2020
Alphabet Soup
October, 2020
The Fall of a Giant
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Foreword:
Birth of a Green economy
The back-story and future projects
Act 1 - The Affair (A long time ago…)
This is the story of an ambitious, arrogant young man named Ekonomie who meets a timeless, beautiful girl named Ekologie… Ekonomie flirts with Ekologie and to the world around them it’s obvious - Ekonomie & Ekologie could make a great couple!
Unfortunately, Ekonomie isn’t serious - he’s just playing with Ekologie. He’s shallow and opportunistic - he doesn't respect her for who she is and worst of all he underestimates Ekologie.
To make matters worse, Ekonomie has an old relationship with Carbon-ita that he just can’t seem to end…
Act 2 - The realization (Not too long ago…)
Ekologie accepted Ekonomie for who he is and kept making sacrifices to make the relationship work but nothing she did was enough. She tries time and again to get Ekonomies’ attention - but he just doesn't understand her.
Ekonomie and Ekologie stayed in touch but went their own ways over the years. Ekology tried to hide it at first but eventually she couldn’t take it anymore. She turns grief stricken, and begins to break down - a storm of emotions overtake her. She loses her temper and erupts, she cries a tsunami of tears and is overcome by a tidal wave of depression. She falls ill, and her condition worsens with every passing day.
Meanwhile, Ekonomie isn’t doing too well either. His girlfriend Carbon-ita is toxic - she completely changed Ekonomies’ life, taking him closer and closer to losing everything that he has tirelessly worked to create. He gets depressed and starts crashing.
Eventually, when Ekonomie turns inward to do some soul searching, he realizes that life was blissful with Ekologie and seeks her out… he knows that he is falling in love and realizes that he can’t live without Ekologie.
Ekonomie knows that it is up to him to make it work with Ekologie but he hasn’t figured out how and then there’s Carbon-ita. Breaking up with Carbon-ita is hard - it’s the most difficult thing that he has ever had to do. He has so much history with her. They have faced good times and bad but they always stuck together nonetheless.
Ekologie’s friend, Ohzone is wary of Ekonomie because he has let her down so many times before - and tells Ekologie not to trust Ekonomie unless he wins her trust and makes a lifelong commitment to her.
Putting her friend’s warnings aside, Ekologie is willing to accept Ekonomie because after all love is blind.
Act 3 - Happily-ever-after (The year 2023)
Announcement at COP 28, Dubai, UAE You are cordially invited to the wedding of Ekonomie, the son of need and greed to Ekologie, the daughter of mother earth and father time.
This union was always meant to be and may it have the support and blessings of every well-wisher, that it may last forever.
Date: To be announced
Venue: Every city, town and village
Act 4 - Birth of Grien Ekonomie (A few years after the wedding)
The marriage of Ekonomie and Ekologie resulted in prosperity and happiness and this announcement:
“A future of hope,
Began with a cry of joy,
We are overjoyed to welcome,
Our healthy baby boy!
Celebrate with us, the birth of our son, Grien Economy.”
Note to construction industry leaders
We must marry the ecology to the economy to see real results. Construction activity and the built environment are among the biggest sources of pollution in the world.
We have a sophisticated and advanced construction sector in the GCC that could set a global example for “green construction,” starting with a commitment to doing so at COP 28, which will be held in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, 2023
Most importantly, the commitments that the industry makes to a green future must have an economic foundation to make them practical and sustainable.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
Tick... tick... tick… BOOM!
Are you ready for explosive growth?
You’ve probably watched an action movie with a time-bomb that ticks away, leaving you in suspense as you cling to your seat and count the seconds before you find out if it will actually go off. Is the bomb real? How powerful is it? Will it be defused? What happens if it goes off?
Funnily enough, the questions are the same even if the explosion we are awaiting is a construction boom.
Sagging stocks. Crashing currencies. Supply chain woes. Record inflation. Annexations. Sanctions. These are thankfully not the best indicators of the next Middle East construction boom.
Bold visions. High oil prices. Regional stability. Exciting concept designs. High oil prices. Completed feasibility studies. Positive policy changes. High oil prices. Completed engineering designs. Tender announcements. Building of core infrastructure. Urban construction contract awards and of course, in case you missed it, high oil prices. These are much better indicators of the next construction boom and they're all flashing green.
That said, it's fair to ask, if it's all so good why does it still feel so bad? To answer that, here are three thoughts for your consideration:
1. Which stage of the construction cycle do you play in? The boom is just starting and this means that many businesses in the construction cycle are at the bottom or quickly headed there as the previous cycle ends for them. It could be 12-24 months before businesses who participate in the latter stages of construction feel the boom.
2. Do you understand and buy into the visions? You need to understand the grand plan for each country to be realistically optimistic. What's the UAE going to be spending on now that the Expo is done? What's Qatar going to do post FIFA? What's Oman's development plan now that it has the finance? How much of KSA's Vision 2030 will realistically happen within the decade?
3. Is reality clouding your vision? We are all influenced by our surroundings and when we have been living through a period of gloom and doom, it’s sometimes hard to believe that a better day isn’t too far away.
You may not feel it yet but the boom is here. Are you ready for it?
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
The Supply-Demand Dance
Construction activity sways from side to side
This dance began in 2020 when the music stopped. Long gone are the days when supply and demand did the fox-trot or the cha-cha-cha moving in lock step with each other - one leading and the other following in quick order.
Supply and demand for property, products and services are these days dancing to their own tunes. We can attribute the dysfunction to the tunes being strung out by disease outbreaks, the hum of natural disaster, the drum beat of man-made wars - both on-the-ground and economic, the treble of careless money printing and of course the omnipresent melody of politics.
We are at a point where supply and demand aren't even performing the same dance - one set may as well be doing the ballet while the other is break-dancing. Picture these two dances happening concurrently on the dance floor, imagine the cacophony as the music overlaps and watch the dancers trip over each other as they comically try to create a semblance of a performance. Now label the scene: The Global Economy.
To fix the problem we need to first turn off all the music. Since that is almost inconceivable to do, the next best thing to do is to get the dancers' ear-plugs or better still noise-canceling air-pods to have supply & demand dance to a new tune
When it comes to construction, the Middle East can be composers of this new tune. The region has an energy-funded orchestra ready to go - it just needs to start playing a steady tune for demand to take the lead in a Waltz where supply will gracefully follow. Before you know it the music will change and supply and demand will once again be swirling and twirling together as they do the Tango
Put on your dancing shoes, a new song is about to begin.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
Cancel the Crises
Navigating a disrupted project market
All the world's a stage
Script writers for good plays and movies create plots that are more dramatic and less intuitive than
anyone would expect. The “unscripted story” of the world seems to naturally be following this same
entertainment guideline to keep us hooked to the twists and turns in the tale we are living. Painting
the picture in broad strokes, we have gone from audacious and gruesome terrorist attacks at the
turn of the century to a over a decade where terrorism was trending, to an unprecedented global
financial crisis to a hollywood inspired pandemic all the way to the present where we have the
spectre of nuclear war. With these events in play, even earth and sky splitting natural disasters
struggle to make the headlines and when they do they feature as trailers for the epic global warming disaster expected
to feature shortly in a city near you.
We are systematically being institutionally desensitized to smaller issues, the issues that matter the most in the microcosm of the societies we live in and our daily lives.
Don't get carried away by a crisis
This is not a criticism of the media driven glorification of crises but a clarion call for more realism in
analysis and less extremism in decision making. Life at the cellular level but in many other ways as
well, including economically, is designed around feedback loops to create homeostasis, which is
defined as a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements. The unchecked distribution of mind-altering
megaphones through publishing technology, communication technology
and social media has changed the feedback loop of global society into an amplification loop that is
leading to dramatic actions followed by louder and more extreme commentary which leads to even
more dramatic action which is followed by higher pitched commentary…
This amplification loop in society is quite blatantly being exploited, sometimes to do harm, sometimes to do good, but in both cases at the discretion of the manipulators wielding their social megaphones
Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems
So you ask, what does this social dissertation have to do with construction? The overall story of
construction is not as good as one would expect with giga projects splashed across the media and
seemingly on the horizon but nor is it as bad as crisis storylines would have you believe. In short, we
have a covid-gap of around 24 months in the project development cycle and you'll experience this
painful delay depending on which stage you play at in the cycle of construction. The good news is
that the region's new project cycle appears to be kicking in again and high oil prices will fuel it to go
quicker.
For construction, broken supply chains will cause disruption through delays but not necessarily disaster. The outlook today is that it's going to stay competitive, and businesses will need to stay lean but don't have to turn mean because the worst is behind us. That said the extreme and rapid actions and reactions make predictions obsolete almost as soon as they are made.
A social solution for stability
Without undermining those who are directly suffering the effects of deaths, destruction, displacement, and
disenchantment, the world would be a better place if we could marry two trending social
phenomena: the Cancel Culture and the Crisis Culture
World leaders, business leaders and everyone with a media megaphone need to stop fanning the flames of disaster to add another twist in a story where many have needlessly lost their lives and others have lost the plot.
Global leaders and people everywhere need to figure out how to tone it down and understand that the goal now needs to be to cancel the crisis.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
The Green Year
Happy Green Year
Net-zero initiatives to drive the foreseeable future
In this edition of the Journal we have recapped and evaluated the 21 reasons we listed at the beginning of 2021 for our optimism for construction bouncing back in the region, to evaluate how we fared against our predictions. We got 18 out of 21 of the reasons right, and businesses in the early stages of the construction cycle are beginning to see the rumblings of a new wave. As we begin 2022, we would like to add the 22nd reason for the next construction boom. This powerful reason will not just drive businesses in the year ahead but for decades to come.
Many in the world have been talking green ever since the 2016 Paris Agreement but much of it in relatively low voices. Rapid global warming and its undeniable environmental effects along with next-generation consciousness driven by social change, expedited by COVID induced spirituality and solitude has made climate change personal. Voices have grown louder post-COVID and ignoring the existence of climate change or treating it as someone else's problem is socially unpopular and going green is trending due to social pressures as well as increasing government incentives and disincentives. An exponentially growing number of business executives are receiving the memo either from customers or from their children that they need to start becoming part of the solution and stop adding to the problem.
Within the region, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar in particular have leveraged their dominant roles in the energy sector to establish positions of global leadership. The green revolution is an energy revolution that spans not just energy generation but also energy transportation and energy utilization, making it a movement that will determine tomorrow's leaders across more than just the energy domain.
With far-sighted ambitions to continue leading in the international energy space for long-term national economic sustainability and the loftier goal of leading a progressive futuristic global society, the need for rapid transformation is apparent and urgent. This need will drive development over the next three decades and even though many initiatives are already underway, 2022 will be marked as the year when the GCC truly started going green.
Encapsulated in a single word, “Sustainability” is the 22nd reason for the next construction wave, backed by pledges by the UAE and Saudi Arabia to a net-zero future and confirmed through UAE's role as the host of the COP 28 Climate Conference in 2023. Sustainability is so broad a theme, so loaded a word that its specific implications and business opportunities are difficult to understand. Every business will need to unpack the word to determine what it means for them but rest assured this single word is going to create new project opportunities, change investment decisions, transform the economics of construction and manufacturing, rewrite construction standards, challenge the conventional design of products, upend supply chains, drive the use of new materials, the invention of new technologies and the creation of entirely new business segments.
No business model is sacrosanct in the green revolution and failing to greenify your products, services and operating methodologies will result in eventual obsolescence. As the market is still in its infancy, tossing around “green” marketing jargon may help you get past a few early business hurdles, but the future belongs to those who contribute to this global goal by truly creating green solutions.
As we enter this exciting new green era in a region that is brimming with ambition and potential to turn these countries into exemplary nations in a sustainable world, I wish you vision and foresight in creating a successful clean green future for your business and a happy green year ahead!
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
Flight of the Falcon
Exponential growth on the horizon
The falcon represents tradition, strength, unity and courage. As the official emblem of the UAE and as the national bird of five out of the six countries in the GCC, the falcon represents the region, its character and its ambition.
The hooded falcon remains calm and unassuming but when these majestic birds take flight they dominate the sky. The hooded economy may appear still at times making it easy to underestimate its sheer power to soar exponentially as it prepares to fiercely hunt its target even though that may mean diving down before soaring again with its prey in its claws.
Among the many features that allow the economic falcon to soar and attain its goal, the most important is arguably its spectacular vision. While its binocular vision allows it to look as much as eight times farther than ordinary humans and see the creation of futuristic Arabian cities with great clarity, it is its focus that will enable it to stay the course as it relentlessly chases its goal.
Falcons are the fastest creatures on earth. This feathered fighter jet is unstoppable once it has taken off and will pass you by in the blink of an eye if you aren't prepared for it. The breakneck speed of growth may seem like a high-class problem but it will be a problem nonetheless and more importantly a major lost opportunity in the absence of preparation and planning.
The falcon is a solitary territorial bird but a loyal one. As each country seeks its own prey in its own way, they remain bound to a partnership that respects competitions. Whether it be a race or a hunt there are rules to the game that reward the winners with both fortune and fame.
Construction is perched for now but the falconers, galvanized by the first World Expo in the Middle East, know that the future is bright as their hooded economic birds of prey plan to take flight towards the horizon of the rising sun.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
The Construction Triathlon
Over the last two decades, the UAE was the region's Construction Ironman of the Decade - the well deserved and unchallenged champion of construction across the region.
To win the Construction Ironman of the Decade title, a country must in the first phase build its infrastructure, in the second it must attract independent private investment and in the third it must maintain trust & momentum. With January, 2020 marking the start line of the race we are now in, December 2030 will mark its end.
In this new decade, the UAE has a prime contender for the title it has earned and held - the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has had no equal in terms of its ambition, speed and agility but today KSA is vying for the title and pulling out all the stops to achieve its goal. While the UAE recovers from its gruelling but winning streak, Saudi Arabia has been in training for the last 4 years with the introduction of its Vision 2030.
As the race begins the UAE is expected to swim with ease into the second segment with its Expo 2020 infrastructure at its disposal. The Kingdom has a tougher start but its been preparing for strong tides, with plans and announcements for its capital, the groundwork for its giga-projects and the massive transport infrastructure spending that it knows it needs to catch up with its more seasoned competitor.
The second segment of the triathlon gets even more interesting as the Kingdom rewrites the rules of the game with a much more aggressive approach than seasoned construction tri-athletes are used to. How the Kingdom's masterminded strategy plays out is anyone's guess to make and how the UAE pedals fast and furiously to navigate through unchartered territory will be an exciting act to follow very closely. Company directors, investors and entrepreneurs will weigh their greed versus fear on scales that are skewed one way or the other by a pandemic that has disrupted conventional business logic to determine who ends this segment in the lead.
The third and last phase of the triathlon is the longest - its a marathon with no apparent end. It's the toughest phase and it requires an unbelievable amount of consistency, discipline and determination. An economy that dehydrates in an unpredictable world could be catastrophic for momentum and the runners can hit the wall if they run out of fiscal energy to drive the slowdowns. Fiscal discipline and stable predictable policy making are two of the main qualities that these endurance athletes need to imbibe to endure the longevity of this phase of the construction ironman challenge.
While the thrill of winning is spectacular, every athlete in an epic endurance race such as this knows, there is no losing if you just finish the race, because every athlete competes first and foremost against themselves. Good professional spectators know this too and remember to cheer each athlete with gusto on every milestone because as they progress along their arduous track, we all win.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
The Construction Lifeline
Saudi Arabia would like to draw a fine line in the sand that leads the country into the future. This isn't just another line that the Red Sea can gently wash away. This is a bold, daring and ambitious line that art aficionados would agree, does Picasso proud. This is the line that will separate the old Arab world from the new.
There are many questions about this line - will it always be straight or will it eventually curve? Will it grow longer? Will it grow wider? Will this be the only line or will there be more lines to follow? How will it be built? Who will pay for it? Who will want to live life on the line?
The Line is being built for a million people, the amount of construction and rate of growth required would be equivalent to that seen by Dubai over the last decade. Is this setting the line for success a bit too high for a development that will begin from scratch in the middle of the desert or will the domestic relocation of a young local population achieve this goal a lot faster?
Creating this line will require crossing many-a-line. It will mean pushing not just the limits of imagination and technology but of human spirit and culture in an endeavour to create a new way of living. For future generations this may be a defining line but for this generation of construction businesses, this is a life-line. The answers will come, but at present construction across the region is at a crawl, as lines must first be drawn on paper before they are transposed on land. Unfortunately for many businesses time is of the essence, because the pandemic has simply put everything on the line.
Saudi giga-construction can be a lifeline and as business advice goes, the best that you can do at present is to get in line to serve an upcoming market in Saudi Arabia. That will also mean toeing the line of the new playbook for success that is being written by the Kingdom in line with an ambitious plan to build The Line.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
21 Reasons Why Construction Will Rebound in 2021
To leave the doom and gloom of 2020 behind us, we challenged our analysts to identify 21 reasons why we believe that construction will rebound in 2021 and onwards. Here is an insightful but unranked list that our team came up with:
Vaccines - Even though the pandemic persists, with vaccines rolling out and immunization rates in the region being among the highest in the world, economic shut-downs are most likely behind us.
UAE's Bicentennial Plan - The UAE leadership has an inspiring vision for the development of the country over the next 50 years and is expected to make new announcements towards the end of the year that commemorate its 50th anniversary in 2022.
KSA Vision 2030 - This massive development plan is expected to accelerate as the initial planning work is completed, leading to a spate of new construction across all sectors as Saudi Arabia reinvents itself into a modern economy.
-
GCC United - The rift between Qatar and its neighboring GCC countries has been resolved and will lead to the resumption of travel and investment within the region.
Israel - The developing friendship with Israel has opened up an affluent market for investors and tourists.
-
China - The region has stood by China without alienating the West and will continue to be rewarded for its friendship through Chinese investments.
-
HNWI and retirement destination - The UAE's response to the pandemic has boosted its credentials as one of the safest places to live, making it an attractive residence for High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) to base their families and their investments, leading to a demand for high-end properties in the UAE.
Remote working destination - The safety, security, infrastructure, connectivity, quality of life and ease of doing business in the UAE make it an ideal base for remote working for executives who need to choose a home-base.
Visas - Relaxed restrictions for visitor visas, and long term visas in the UAE and Saudi Arabia have eliminated a key barrier to trade and investment.
Investor friendly laws - The adoption of business friendly regulations, inheritance, and company ownership laws in the UAE make it a significantly more attractive destination for entrepreneurs and businessmen.
Food security - The global lock-down has taught the region that it needs to be more self-reliant and is driving the development of agriculture, farms, fisheries and food processing and food storage facilities.
Essential goods - The need for local manufacturing of essential products and pharmaceuticals has moved up on almost every government's priority list.
Medical Infrastructure - The need for a more robust hospital infrastructure exists was made clear by the COVID crisis and will lead to greater investment in medical facilities.
NEOM - This vision and clearly evident leadership commitment to this USD 500 billion giga project will create opportunities for the entire construction supply chain as a futuristic metropolis is built from scratch.
Major new oil & gas finds - There have been several major hydrocarbon discoveries in the region over the course of 2020 that will require development of extraction, processing, storage and distribution facilities.
FIFA 2022 - While construction in Qatar for the event is well underway or complete, neighboring countries can expect to benefit from this global event if their hospitality and transport infrastructure is in place prior to the event.
Dubai Expo will attract visitors and investors showcasing the best that the region has to offer and is expected to lead to investment in the years ahead.
PPP model - The growth and success of the public private partnership across the region is creating funding, improving project execution and investment opportunities.
Renewable energy leadership - As the region works towards becoming a leader in new age renewable energy technologies such as solar power and hydrogen fuel, new infrastructure needs to be built.
Incomplete projects - The relatively large number of projects that are on hold is infact a bank of work that will continue to return to the construction cycle to be completed.
Oil prices - Last but definitely not least, oil prices have risen significantly after their pandemic driven crash and are not expected to fall again to the levels seen in 2020 even with the ongoing pandemic. Higher oil prices in 2021 will make it easier for the regional hydrocarbon-dependent governments to raise funding and spend on recovery while balancing their budgets.
We hope that you will agree that these are strong reasons to believe in 2021 and the future of the region and that they will help you recalibrate your forecasts even as the fall-out of 2020 continues.
Wishing you a positive and prosperous 2021.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
Grounded
Vaccines to fuel recovery
If the economy was an aeroplane, the 2020 pandemic was a mayday call that resulted in an emergency landing. Expecting to be fueled by vaccines, business sentiment is increasingly positive, giving hope that 2021 will bring clear skies and an "all clear for takeoff."
At present though, we're still on the tarmac experiencing delays as the economic aircraft engineers tinker with the flying machine and the fuel trucks with their orange flashing lights pull up to feed the beast. The air-conditioning on the plane isn't functioning, making it uncomfortable for everyone on the inside and all you can get for sustenance until take off is bottled water and packaged nuts. Business leaders are the crew that don't quite know when the plane will take off, they've promised departure a few times now, leading one to believe that their guess may be only as good as your own. Even so, you'd still like to believe that someone knows when the beast will be back in the air.
As per the weather forecast, the climate enroute is expected to get worse before it gets better, due to the storm surge of cases that are still expected to hit some coasts. You realize that it doesn't matter too much if you're flying first, business or coach - no one's going anywhere until the plane fuels up and passes the engine checks.
After all, this isn't the run of the mill engine trouble and some special testing may be required before we're back to gliding in the skies. Keep your seat-belts on and don't fret when you experience some taxiing on the runway without take-off, turbulence when you do and some short flights that test the landing gear. It's all par for the course.
The experts are working to get us back in the air in 2021 and there is little doubt that we'll soon be airborne, but for now while we patiently wait, the best that most of us can do is be thankful for the bottled water and the packaged nuts!
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
The Project Market - Alphabet Soup
The market loses its appetite
When COVID began and the economy crashed, some predicted a V-shaped recovery, some said it would be an L, there were bets on a U and others expected a W. In construction, what we seem to have on our hands is alphabet soup depending on your market mix, where you stand in the construction cycle and the metric you are looking at.
Looking at the GCC as a whole, the solid-V from the UAE, Saudi and Qatar for project completions gives the region as a whole a clear V-recovery for this metric as contractors got back to work with gusto after the lock-down and chugged away at their backlogs.
When it comes to new project announcements we get a mix of a little-v from Saudi that is offset by capital L's from others, which when rolled together, give you hope for a regional little-u as governments devise recovery plans and private investors recover their appetite.
A V-recovery for project awards is tantalizing but it seems remote at present, as does an equally appetizing project-award U. An L is unpalatable because it's too pessimistic but unfortunately it's quite realistic, at least for some economies in the region and that's what we currently see across the board.
L's can turn to U's, if the chefs in charge successfully tweak their recipes. However, age-old recipes for economic success are hard to change. It's time to fiddle with the ingredients to make a U-project-award-soup, but there is no guarantee that the market will cultivate a taste for any new recipe.
When it comes to the GCC project market as a whole we must brace for a L-w-w-v-V-w…
The alphabet soup on the table is currently hard to digest. You could leave the table with indigestion or get used to it while the chefs figure out how to make it better.
Bon appetit.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer
Foreword:
The Fall of a Giant
Giants are born,
Giants will grow,
Giants change the world and then one day,
They are no more...
Once upon a time in a land of opportunity there lived a mighty giant that built the tallest building in the world... to tell the story as fairy tales go.
The story of the rise and fall of a giant has all the makings for a fantastic story book, but now imagine that you're not being told the story but you're within it, witnessing and experiencing every twist and turn in the tale. This isn't the story about giants, it's a story about you in a land of giants, in a battle where giants and men will fall.
As you weave your story, you need to skillfully weave your way to stay out of the shadow of falling giants. You may still feel the earth shake as they land with a thud but you'll still be able to celebrate survival as you look forward to revival. There will be mayhem and disruption and destruction, but from all this will rise opportunity that will grow as magic bean-stalks do. Tall and high when you least expect them to, creating a home for perhaps a new giant that hums, "fee-fi-fo-fum."
If you're familiar with the fairy tale, you know that there will be new golden eggs of opportunity for those who survive the collapse of a giant, to tangle with the next one. To climb the sky-high beanstalk, you'll need to be agile but to get away with a golden egg from the giants of tomorrow, you'll need guile.
In closing, I would like to express my deep respect and admiration for the tremendous work done by thousands of men and women in construction who work in so many unsung jobs to painstakingly create the amazing world around us. As we watch the tragic loss of jobs and disruption to lives from the collapse of construction businesses large and small, we pray for a better day.
Avin Gidwani
Chief Executive Officer