I’ve never been a believer in the saying that you should never go back, and so when the opportunity came to return to Construction Machinery Middle East halfway through January – I naturally jumped at the chance.
For those who started reading the magazine in the last few years, that line may make absolutely no sense at all. For the unitiated, my time with Construction Machinery Middle East dates all the way back to the start of the magazine which was, unbelievably, over a decade ago after I made the jump from another well-known title in the equipment world.
From the off, I adored working with the team at CPI and even more with the many people that I met in the industry. I was at last year’s Construction Machinery Awards at the Radisson Red, and it was a real pleasure to catch-up with friends from the sector that I hadn’t seen for half-a-decade. We all may have had a little more grey hair but what struck me was how much this sector still means to us all.
So when Mark Dowdall announced that he was take on an exciting new challenge, I was hoping that it could lead to at least some time to help out the team – and then was honoured when I was approached to take on the role as head of the magazine again. After all, some of my favourite moments in my writing career came from working on this magazine that is in your hands or on your screen as you read this.
There were the early forays into Saudi Arabia, the missed flights because interviews went off into improbable but exciting tangents, the coffees which would mix industry gossip and advice to me as a young father, the trips to the top of tower cranes over cities that were only just being built.
The industry was a very different place in those early years. The boom and bust of the late-naughties left many wondering whether we many companies could survive into the next decade. The traditional trading of equipment was also stalling with unsused equipment bought for projects that would never be built was sitting idle in yards with even auction houses wondering whether they could shift it in a reserved sale. The prices tumbled, inventories became liabilities and capex funding dried-up.
Everything was big, not much was compact. I remember when we started covering mini-excavators and loaders, the discussion was whether the market would ever ‘get’ them. As ever, we always remained determined to cover anything that was interesting, anything that could fit into a contractor’s fleet – even if they didn’t yet appreciate it. Thankfully the market stabilised, Saudi Arabia started to re-emerge and Dubai won the Expo – and the sector began to recover.
Coming back to it after all these years, I am very pleased that sense of community is still there – you only have to look at the reaction to the Turkey-Syria earthquake. It is also in a much more advanced state, rental companies perform as safety valves, digital technology is opening up new ways to construct and operate, safety is much more important – and the magazine is now also a website and a series of events. It’s exciting to be back – and I can’t wait to catch up with you all in the months ahead.
