When Al Ryum was established in Abu Dhabi in the late 1980s, it was a pioneer. It had entered a market where there simply were no commercial landscaping countries – after all, it was a city in a desert. But Al Ryum was a company created with a vision – a vision to turn Abu Dhabi into a garden city.
“The founder of the company wanted to create a desert oasis as a whole country,” says Rafael Khanoyan, Al Ryum’s CEO. “That is why Abu Dhabi is so green today. He wanted to provide roads and parks, and that has expanded into all the other Emirates. We have planted millions of trees.”
While today Al Ryum has the experience and the capacity to take on the really big projects, it needed to start somewhere.
“When our founders started the business, they started doing small projects,” Khanoyan tells us. “We would do a road, a park, some playground equipment, and over the years the projects became bigger.”
If a business is good at one thing, it is only a matter of time before customers want it to do other things, and that has provided Al Ryum with a path to growth.
“Our ambitions and creativity grew, and those projects became large,” Khanoyan says. “We added the capability to provide infrastructure, drainage, toilet blocks, and small buildings.”
The company started diversifying and establishing its own infrastructure and buildings departments. Over time it became a total solution provider that clients could depend on. In the Abu Dhabi market, there had never been a full-service landscaping provider before, but now that was what Al Ryum was offering.
Playing the Field
Today, Al Ryum offers everything from golf courses to theme parks.
“That we can offer a turnkey solution has been a unique selling point,” Khanoyan points out. “We can handle the full scope of a project, managing it in-house, but the other advantage we have is that unlike most of our competitors, our owners are involved in every project down to the site level. We operate the company like a family, retaining our qualified staff. Our reputation in the market stands as a company that is involved in every little detail of a project, to always deliver.”
That attention to detail is combined with an unrivalled versatility that allows Al Ryum to expand or reduce the scope of its work very quickly. It is experienced with everything from mega projects to minor landscaping jobs.
But Khanoyan is clear that Al Ryum as it exists today is far more than a landscaping company.
“We are a general contractor,” he says. “Landscaping is still one of our largest business segments, but over the last 15 years we have started competing for contracts on desalination plants, specialised buildings, and of course, theme parks.”
But with a wider playing field comes greater competition, and Khanoyan is the first to point out that the market is competitive.
“Obviously competition is very high, a lot of new companies have entered the market, and companies that have been established for quite a long time are now competing with companies trying to make a name for themselves,” Khanoyan says.
As well as new names entering the sector, Al Ryum also has to deal with a smaller volume of products on the table right now.
“The size of our overhead is substantial, but the volume of projects has not been there for the last five to seven years,” Khanoyan says. “However, that is changing, which is very positive for the sector. Covid was a challenge for everybody, but we engaged that as a good opportunity for companies like ours to take a step back and reevaluate our structure and efficiency while still finding ways to be profitable.”
The Industry’s Training Ground
Whatever is happening in the market, and however the business itself evolves, Khanoyan believes it all comes down to quality.
“The trick is to deliver a high-quality product,” he says. “That is what we are known for. We provide quality while turning a profit.”
It is a kind of virtuous circle. Al Ryum is known for quality, and being known for quality attracted talent to Al Ryum.
“That is where our reputation and the history of the company comes into play,” says Khanoyan. “Al Rym became a brand name in the market.”
To understand Al Ryum’s reputation for talent, one need only look at the people running its competition.
“Our competitors all have people in senior management roles who have worked at Al Ryum at one time or another,” Khanoyan laughs. “Our clients often tell us that Al Ryum is a university. All of our competitors’ management were here at one time or another in their career.”
It is a reputation that attracts staff who want to be part of the journey Al Ryum is on. With projects in Africa, Iraq, and Jordan as well as the Emirates themselves, Al Ryum is an appealing prospect for people who share its vision.
“We want global expansion, and we are targeting international markets. We are expanding out of the construction industry to become a developer, not just in the UAE but also in Europe and the United States,” Khanoyan says. “Our vision is to go with the trend to build a brand as a sustainable partner and incorporate the latest green technology into our business.”
There are times, Khanoyan tells us, when recruits have chosen Al Ryum over potential employers who offer to pay more, simply because of the value Al Ryum offers in experience.
“We are a very transparent company, I deal personally with our team all the way down to labour,” Khanoyan says. “There is not a bureaucracy. I always tell everyone the office boy can become the CEO and take my role! And ultimately, that is the plan. Our site engineers have become general managers.”
The next generation of managers will face new challenges, but Khanoyan is already preparing for them, particularly, in the search for the generation of talent after that.
“Youth do not want to be in the construction industry anymore. Social media has promoted so many other, more attractive lifestyles,” Khanoyan says. “We have got to show the next generation the opportunities we have to offer. This can be the most stressful industry in the world, but we have also got to show them the best of the industry. Success is not just about money but seeing a project you have been sweating over day and night come to fruition. When they inaugurate that building, that accomplishment is success itself. We have delivered projects people thought we could not, and that feeling is worth more than any money.”
