Nothappydays

I feel so sorry for my neighbours. Moved over here to AD with their children last year to work for Laing O Rourke. He found out this week that Aldar have stopped all their contracts and given everyone redundancy notices. Where do these british companies get off. They enticed whole familes over. My neighbour said they encouraged her husband to bring his family and now they have nothing. Not sure what he's going to do as not many construction jobs around at any level or specification. Does anyone have any ideas? Hope you don't mind me asking. I've come across this site and you all seem so supportive. Any tips I can give them?

commander

if they are in debt..leave soon.

AnotherWorld

I used to work in that industry too before I was made redundant. Now everyone I speak with on a personal level there in construction that is losing/has lost their job, has said they cannot find any other work. These are good, experienced people, architects, engineerings, construction managers.

calipso

The company I am with are currently recruiting for Abu Dhabi based vacancies. All levels from Project Directors / Managers, QA/QC Managers senior designers, site engineers and inspectors.

PM me and I can give you contact details.

cal.

soukie

I presume that the new round of redundancies relate to "the rumours" that Motorworld has been stopped, the Labour Camp work has stopped and PMS (apart from the claims dept) is finally finished. There have been numerous postings about ALOR since December 2008 so therefore lots of people are in the same position. The worst thing about is that Laing O'Rourke don't give a monkeys - can you believe that they distributed T shirts to some staff the other day with the words "Aldar Laing O'Rourke & ME a winning team". I couldn't believe it! Next day the latest batch of letters went out. They certainly need a management shake up starting at the top and they certainly need to improve their communication with their staff. Maybe it's too late for them though as I don't suppose LOR will be around for much longer in AD as they appear to have upset the wrong people.

commander

why would they care about their staff though? they have made their money, people have enjoyed the goodtimes, now things have turned sour, people get paid off. Tragic but that is the cycle of work..

ive just met my best friend today in scotland and he has had to take a 15% cut in his hourly rate and only work 4 days a week just to keep his job. So this is a global thing.

soukie

Yes - you are correct. It is global and I know people that have taken 10% cuts to keep jobs here and in UK.

The reason I said that LOR don't care is because they have messed staff around by saying that things were fiine and it's business as usual and then the next minute issuing letters saying otherwise. Mixed messages from a very poor management team who fail to communicate with staff. They should just be straight about things rather than mess people around - it's still not clear to many how the company have lost such a big contract but there are plenty of rumours as to why - seems like they got a bit too greedy!

Foxes

here's a little story i heard on the grapevine from one of AD premier developers (company x) - make of it what you will.....

company x chairman was presented with a approx AED 600m contract to sign by his board. he questioned the value of the contract and called in the supplier. the supplier had a AED 10m clause which compensated him should the deal be cancelled by company x at any time. the chairman knew of this clause. the chairman stated to the supplier reduce your costs by 40% or cancel the contract -against the advice of his board. the supplier subsequently walked of with AED 10m and said goodbye.

the chairman went back to board and instructed them to re-tender the contract - which they subsequently did. the winning tender from a different supplier came back in at approx AED 300m.

savvy work by a chairman on the ball imo...

soukie

Thanks foxes an interesting insight!

AnotherWorld

Means nothing without some names.

Foxes

well thats all your getting - as i said, make of what you will !!

EXALOR

I was employed by Aldar Laing O'Rourke for several months before I was made redundant just after mobilising my family.

Apart from the economic downturn the main reason for ALOR's demise was that the Client Aldar (the developer) became aware that it was being ripped off by their "partner" Laing O'Rourke.

The projects were let on a cost plus basis and basically ALOR did not care what they spent and billed the Client for everything, even for costs not incurred at Al Raha Beach. That is why they brought out so many staff from around the world...so that they could get their 20-50% mark-up on every man and woman employed out there. When the Client became aware of what was going on they threatened to kick them out and it was then that LOR suddenly started to tighten things up and that was the start of all the redundancies...to get rid of all the people they did not really need.

The internal investigations revealed gross misconduct with the costings. Money had been syphoned from one project to another with Aldar being deliberately kept in the dark. It was a bit like paying your credit card with with another credit card. You see they did not want to go over the pre-determined budget figures because they knew that would alert Aldar to what was going on. Eventually it all caught up with Laing O'Rourke and then it all started to go belly up.

ALDAR cancelled contracts and put a block on any new works starting and only continued with the committed existing works. They instructed LOR not to deploy new resources nor deploy resources on cancelled jobs. That is why they had to terminate everyone.

However, during all this time the Laing O'Rourke group continued to spue out lovely positive messages about their wonderful partnership with ALDAR but the relationship was finished. They called the mass redundancies their "vision for the future".

<snip>

What they did was unilaterally change conditions of employment and bullied everyone into working 7 days a week, cancelled planned holidays to try and get people to resign. If that did not work then they brought trumped up allegations of gross misconduct. Anyone still on probabation was dismissed forthwith without any compensation whatsoever and in many cases without even being given an air-ticket back home. What they apparently did was give them the ticket but deduct the cost from their final payment.

The whole job was a mess and it was a relief to get out of there and back to the UK. Although still unemployed I would not go back to that for anything.

The guys in-charge ought to be prosecuted for fraud and locked up an Abu Dhabi jail.

By the way Laing O'Rourke is supposed to be the biggest construction Contractor in the UK. Mr Ray O'Rourke is the man in charge and he had to conduct a number of interviews with the UK construction press to try and quell rumours of impending bankruptcy. With the fall out from Al-Raha I doubt they will survive. Drastic measures for a recluse !!

Latest rumours are that Laing O'Rourke will be kicked out of the middle east. <snip>

I would seriously advise no-one to joing this dying out-fit.

EXALOR

I believe this was for a contract to supply electrical cables. Aldar was being treated as a cash cow. In the beginning when the economics were good Aldar wanted everything completed as fast as possible and to heck with the cost. That is why complacency set in the way Laing O'Rourke ran their business. The subcontractors and suppliers were well aware of this and of course tried to rip off Laing O'Rourke and then LOR ripped off Aldar. Only when Aldar started asking for re-tenders did they start to realise the extent to which they had been ripped off.

EXALOR

This was very common. I heard of one bloke from Australia who got offered a job on al-raha beach. He had just got married. He sold his house, sold his cars and then got an email a week before he was due to travel to say don't bother his job has been cancelled. No compensation or nothing.

There was another who got there and in the first week was told his services would not be required beyond his probation period. Problem was that a 40' container with his personal effects was on its way by ship to Abu Dhabi. Con compensation again. This was despite them telling him to send it he will get the money back after his probations was passed.

EXALOR

Yes it was unbelievable. they tried to dress up the redundancy issue as part of a successful business plan. They sent us an email to attend a "seminar" called "our vision for the future" just before xmas at which they produced a load of charts, reeled off a load of numbers and said nice words about how wonderful Laing O'Rourke was. Then they said that our role in this far reaching plan is that we would all be sacked. Have a nice xmas !!