< Previous60 Vol. 23/09, September 2022 FEATURE / TECHNOLOGY Setting the recent scenario aside, here’s breaking down the current stance of where most UAE-based companies are on cryptocurrencies Is investing in cryptocurrency really worth the hype? OLA LIND, CEO AND DIRECTOR OF FTFT CAPITAL INVESTMENTS The current dip of the most sought-after currencies has raised serious dilemmas about whether the hype of investing in it is worth it. The unstable nature triggered a ‘sell’ response in many investors and raised a serious doubt amongst new investors. However, considering the recent developments taking place and regulations shaping their way, it can be said that the future is ‘crypto’. Leading on, a path down the memory lane of where all the hype started will help in understanding why the future of crypto is safe and sound. The need for blockchain and cryptocurrencies was felt strongly after an unfortunate incident in January of 2010 when Haiti witnessed a 7.0 magnitude quake killing more than 200,000 and causing enormous property damage. the same flaws as paper records, as the transfer of property would entail a manual process and would not be backed by a secure technology like blockchain. The earthquake in Haiti was also an eye-opener for the world, as the publicity raised donations of $500m never reached the designated country. This situation opened the door and laid the first brick of trust in cryptocurrency, as these are secure and reach the designated party without any third- party involvement. Apart from that, another recent realisation hit the world when most recent refugees stated that they felt “financially safe” as they carried their cryptocurrencies with them – and this is precisely what cryptos backed by blockchain stands for – borderless, government-less cash – leading up to one of the main reasons why it has been termed as ‘modern-day gold’– referring to how refugees during the industrial times would carry gold with them during wars for its irreplaceable value as a form of payment. The UAE fi nancial sector The Central Bank of UAE announced that by 2026 they would be launching their very first digital currency encouraging the country’s vision to become a crypto hub. Additionally, the Dubai World Trade Centre and the UAE Securities and Commodities Authority have started working towards making WTC a safe and innovative crypto zone for digital assets. This move will strategically position the Emirates amongst the region’s leading blockchain hub. The verdict The shift in the UAE banking sector and the regulations being created by the nation in favour of this technology, indicate that blockchain and digital assets will not be an immediate death sentence to the traditional banking system. However, this will definitely become a defining point that will disrupt the traditional banking method altogether, making transactions more secure, easier, convenient and faster. u Industry leader Ola Lind, CEO and Director of FTFT Capital Investments u Digital asset Cryptocurrency is decentralised and is very diffi cult to change by a single party One of the devastating effects of the earthquake, apart from the massive loss of life, was the loss of documentation. Haiti and many developed countries like the United States are still dependent on paper for their transaction and are not technologically backed. Simply computerising these records would have a benefit over the paper form. However, they would still entail AN ITP MEDIA GROUP EVENT Wednesday 21st September 2022 Taj Exotica The Palm, Dubai, UAE Unpacking the biggest opportunities and challenges facing working women in the region 2 ways to participate and join the conversation Register as a delegate Confirm your sponsorship presence COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES Saraswati Agarwal Group Commercial Director Tel: +971 4 444 3352 GSM: +971 52 895 2214 E-mail: saraswati.agarwal@itp.com EVENT ENQUIRIES Anthony Chandran Marketing & Events Manager Tel: +971 4 444 3689 E-mail: anthony.chandran@itp.com EVENT SPONSORS & PARTNERS Women in Business Conference 202262 Vol. 23/09, September 2022 FEATURE / CONSTRUCTION Arabian Business sits down with Simon Marr, managing director of crane rental giant Marr Contracting, for a discussion on sustainability in the construction industry and the importance of maintaining a focus on innovation Effi ciency, productivity and innovation: The case for sustainability How can you keep innovation at the centre of business? Because it’s been the centre of our business from the beginning. I mean, that’s how our business started. My grandfather, he started the business. 80% The fuel savings Marr Contracting has gained by adopting new technologies and switching to diesel and biofuels u Heavyweight Sydney-based Marr Contracting is a world leader in the design and delivery of heavy lift luffi ng crane solutions So originally we were a foundry. We had a steel foundry and my grandfather decided to build a crane. And the great family story is that he came out of school at 16. He went and said to his father, ‘I’m going to build a crane because we need one for the foundry’. So he went off and built a crane. He designed it, built it himself and then finished it, and his dad said, ‘So what are you going to do now?’ He said, ‘I’m going to build another one,’ and his dad said, ‘There’ll never be enough work for two cranes in Sydney.’ But he did. He went off and he innovated from the very beginning. And that’s something that’s been drilled into us all the way through our lives about you’ve got to innovate, you’ve got to stand out, you’ve got to push the boundaries constantly. We’re constantly challenging ourselves, and constantly looking at ways of improving our business. arabianbusiness.com 63 we got the client to realign their construction methodology and take it to a fully modular construction. They were going to lift individual panels and build the bridge structure up 320 metres in individual steel panels, and we got to box those out and make them into full modules. Instead of lifting one panel, we lifted eight together. Originally, they were around 20-tonne panels and we took them up into 160-tonne modules. What that did was it drove the programme, and it meant the bridge actually ended up opening over 12 months ahead of schedule. We played a part in that, which was getting the towers up as quickly as we could. That then set the scene for the other trades to come through, all the other subcontractors to come through and finish up the bridge. From a sustainability point of view, if we can get efficiencies in the construction, we weren’t really trying to effect what type of materials they use, but we can give clients a choice around whether they want to use modular steel or modular concrete, bigger precast elements, bigger steel members, less of them, less temporary works, and less congestion on project. That all leads, if we do it correctly, and we work closely with our clients, it should reduce the timeframe. That leads to a smaller carbon footprint on a project. Whether it’s through product, whether it’s about how we integrate that product into a project, about how we communicate with our clients. I think what we’ve done really well is we’ve built trust within the market, with our clients where they know they can trust us to deliver them a solution. And that’s really, really important. And that’s sometimes where we struggle in new markets because we’re trying to go into a client and we’re trying to say to them, here’s a completely different way of looking at how to do this but it will drive really positive outcomes for you around safety, because you’ve got less lifting and you’ve got less cranes on site, and around productivity. You can increase your productivity through less lifting, bigger lifts, and then that has a direct impact on your schedule. How can you engage with sustainability in the industry? I think the word sustainability gets thrown around a lot without really understanding what it means and I think there are so many dimensions to sustainability, and it’s not just about what type of power are you using to operate your equipment or what type of material you’re using on your project. There are so many different sides to that model of sustainability. One of the key things that doesn’t get talked about a lot is around productivity. I think productivity is up there as one of the most influential factors on how sustainable a project is. For us, as a business, our crane fleets predominantly run on diesel cranes, because they’re very, very productive, highly productive, they have high speed winches, they work in really strong winds, and we get a really high lifting capacity out of those cranes. That’s part of it. But the other thing is, how do we take that diesel engine and / CONSTRUCTION q CRANES ARE IN MY BLOOD. EVER SINCE I WAS A KID, ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS WORK IN THE FAMILY BUSINESS” u Proven track record Marr Contracting is constantly looking at ways to improve its business, Marr says turn it into a more sustainable engine. We’ve done that through adopting renewable diesel that we’re using at the moment, with HVO fuel, which is a zero emissions fuel, so we can bring that into our machines – that’s been a big move forward for us. But I still only see that as really a very, very small part of sustainability because the cranes use such a small amount of fuel. A Toyota Land Cruiser uses more fuel than the biggest machines we have which is the largest capacity tower crane in the world. The fuel part of it is a very small piece. The bit that’s really interesting is around the productivity gains we get. We just finished a project in Turkey where we worked on the world’s biggest suspension bridge. We developed a crane methodology that let the client completely change the way they were going to construct the bridge and we got involved really, really early in the design stage, and 330 The standard lift capacity in tonnes of the Marr 2480D Heavy Lift Luffi ng (HLL) crane64 Vol. 23/09, September 2022 FEATURE / CONSTRUCTION Should the conversation around sustainability shift to productivity and effi ciency rather than a focus on energy and materials in which case? I think that’s the missing link that people don’t seem to talk about. I saw a white paper that was released by one of the large UK contractors a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking around fuel and materials, but they weren’t talking about productivity, and I thought that’s interesting. They’ve completely missed that in their white paper. Sure, the fuel’s part of it, yes, I agree with that, and materials as well. But that’s just one piece of the jigsaw. If we don’t look at sustainability holistically, then we’re going to miss something that’s not going to drive the right outcome. Some of those conversations and challenges become really difficult, especially around productivity and around methods of construction. Because often, especially the construction industry, people are so set in their ways about how they’ve done stuff, there’s techniques they’re using now that we’re using to build the pyramids, and that hasn’t changed a lot. We have to use technology, we have to use new methods, and we’ve got to drive that to get a really positive outcome in construction. We’ve got to get people to think differently, and that’s one of the things we talk about in our What is your outlook for the construction sector? I think if you look at what’s happening globally at the moment, around sustainability, around some of the global conflicts that are going on at the moment, I think there’s a real shift that’s happening across the market on a number of different fronts. If you look at the sustainability part, it’s almost like we’re heading into the next Industrial Revolution of our generation. That’s quite interesting. I mean, you’ve got this completely shift away from traditional power sources, and everyone’s talking about hydrogen, wind, solar, nuclear, all sorts, and countries are invested in that. And then you’ve got conflict that’s happening in Ukraine and then you’ve got a shift away from Russian-supplied materials and gas and whatever else to other parts of the world. I think it’s a really interesting period that we’re coming into. And that there are knock-on effects into all sorts of infrastructure. As we’re coming out of the back of Covid-19 governments are having a huge impact on construction. For example, back in Australia there’s a big spend on infrastructure, which is the government tipping money straight back into the economy, hopefully as efficiently and as quickly as they can, which is creating jobs, it’s creating wealth in the country. u Contractor Marr Contracting has more than 90 years’ experience working on large-scale construction projects in Australia and around the world u Building bridges The 1915 Canakkale Bridge in northwestern Turkey was completed 18 months ahead of schedule, in part due to the innovative heavy lifting crane solution developed by Marr Contracting q A TOYOTA LAND CRUISER USES MORE FUEL THAN THE BIGGEST MACHINES WE HAVE” MEETING INDUSTRY NEEDS Marr Contracting’s fl eet include mobile and tower cranes for hire on everything from high-rise and general construction jobs to large-scale infrastructure projects. business always about think differently, challenge the norm, let’s push things as hard as we can. We do that in our machines, in our cranes, even around what type of materials we use. We’re trying to do that so we can get more for less out, and that’s what it’s about.4th Annual BIM & DIGITAL TWINS MIDDLE EAST 2022 is the region’s leading event for Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Digital Twins, organized with Event Partners buildingSMART UAE, Dubai Municipality, Land Department, and buildingSMART International. Event theme is Open BIM & Digital Twins: The Key to Industry 4.0 and includes a 2-day conference plus workshop on latest developments for BIM, Digital Twins, GIS, digital design, digital transformation, 3D and related technology. Presentations focus on the role of digital construction technology from project concept and design, project management, to full lifecycle asset management. Presentations are given by government and private sector organizations at the forefront of the region’s construction industry, plus, international organizations that are leaders in smart sustainable construction and built asset management. For full details including program, online registration and event sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities please visit www.itp.events/BIMDigitalTwinsMiddleEast2022 FOR FURTHER EVENT DETAILS INCLUDING EVENT SPONSORSHIP AND EXHIBITOR OPPORTUNITIES, CONTACT: Anthony Sprange T: +971 58 598 9062 E: anthony.sprange@itp.com Scan the QR code to learn more about the event and register BIM & Digital Twins Middle East 2022 and Smart Construction Conference & Expo 2022 will be held on: 20 & 21 SEPTEMBER, THE CROWNE PLAZA DUBAI EVENT PARTNERS POW E R E D BY: CONTENT PARTNERSSUPPORTING EVENT PARTNER DIAMOND SPONSOR SILVER SPONSOR SILVER SPONSORPLATINUM SPONSOR LUNCH SPONSOR GOLD SPONSOR BRONZE SPONSOR SILVER SPONSOR WORKSHOP SPONSOR66 Vol. 23/09, September 2022 Expo City Dubai Building on Expo 2020 Dubai’s commitment to inspire the generation of the future, Expo City Dubai will offer meaningful educational and cultural experiences to inspire learning and creativity Venue Attractions Leader Big event Pricing The site offi cially opens on October 1, but two pavilions – Mobility and Sustainability will open September 1 Eighty percent of Expo 2020- built infrastructure will remain as part of Expo City Emirati politician Reem Al Hashimy, the face of the Expo 2020 Dubai, will continue her work as chief executive offi cer of the new Dubai city The UN COP28 climate change conference will be held at Expo City Dubai in November 2023 No ticket price to enter Expo City Dubai, but tickets to enter pavilions are priced at AED50 per personNext >