I sit on my balcony, wondering:
Do construction cranes have feelings? Do they get lonely,
depressed?
Sad for being underappreciated and under-utilised, reduced
to the dumb role of a piece of a stagecraft?
Frozen in a set position for months, decorated by signs, lit
up at night, guarding over an unfinished building, enviously eyeing their
brothers on the other side of Sheik Zayed’s road, busily pulling up yet another
tower, in front of their weary eyes.
There are probably at least a dozen cranes on the
abandoned – or diplomatically labelled – temporarily suspended, Dubai Pearl
construction site.
They’ve been sitting there, idle for months now, if not a
full year, some clever chap having decided it to be a good move to keep them
there, nicely spaced out; such a prime location cannot be ignored for marketing
purposes.
Or maybe they just have no new jobs to go to, even
temporarily while the troubled project gets its funding sorted and restarts?
Some 6000km to the East their not-so distant relatives
have been having a slightly more exciting life.
In February Gammon, Leighton’s JV partner on a number of
high profile projects in Hong Kong held their annual Spring Dinner.
Probably not considered a luxury by the company, just a
run of the mill entertainment for the loyal employees and some VIPs.
Sure, the ‘airline-industry’ themed party did not lack on
flamboyance, trust the marketing department to go all nine yards to make every
detail, just right. From the entry ‘fake screening gates’ via the make-believe boarding
card tickets to the buttons on all of the VIPs uniforms, things were shiny, in
style and grand.
Still, what would have interested the mishandled cranes
from the Dubai story more than any other bling, would have been the role a concrete
truck had to play at the party.
Not only was it lovingly cleaned (if not entirely new), polished
and decorated with a lovely pink horse for the occasion but also parked in the
middle of one of the halls in the Asia World Expo.
Candy saw to it that the well appreciated vehicle had the
best view of the event.
I should probably feel honoured if any/many of my loyal readers
got all the way through here, without giving up on this post and/or labelling
me as someone that has ‘finally lost it’.
That maybe so, I’d caution anyone against jumping into
conclusions too hastily.
Not my perceived fragile state of mind, nor even my well
documented feelings of distrust against these companies should distract from
the fact, that the management of these entities have still not found their way
of steering the companies into long term stability, if anything, they are the
ones ‘losing it’.
One may rightly wonder how could I be reaching such a harsh
conclusion based on two, relatively benign incidents of careless use of petty
cash, that I have remotely observed?
I can and I do.
Because, these are only the tips of the icebergs of ‘management
by arrogance’ practices employed by these two construction ‘giants’ – and on
these icebergs I’ll keep on reporting.
For my own sanity, the future of the AEC and for those
poor cranes across the road.
First picture from here
Second, my own.
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