For leading large scale transportation projects that enhance infrastructure and efficiency worldwide

Group Senior Manager – Project Management, Group Planning & Project Management at DP World | Dubai, United Arab Emirates

If a project involves moving along a road or floating across a sea, Abdulla Al Haidan wants to be part of it. The group senior manager of group planning and project management at Dubai’s DP World says he gets “stars in my eyes” whenever a new transportation project lands in his portfolio. His passion for infrastructure projects began with his very first assignment as a project manager, leading a cross-country, cross-functional team to implement the BOXBAY High Bay Storage system, an eco-friendly innovation that enhanced port efficiency by tripling trans-shipment capacity while reducing land use and container-port bottlenecks.

That project continues to inspire Abdulla to aim higher. “BOXBAY was a new product that we introduced to the market; it had never been done before and represented a new way of handling cargo. Instead of using a traditional port, this automated smart system stores containers on High Bay Racks. To do something truly new and truly challenging for your first project as a project manager—I can’t forget it,” he says.

Whether working on sea or on land, Abdulla applies the same core set of project management principles to each endeavor. In the transportation sector, it’s especially important to think about available resources and the resource strain that a project can create, so sustainability is on the forefront of Abdulla’s mind. “We are a global end-to-end supply chain provider,” he says, “and when we operate in areas that may not even have sufficient energy supplies for their cities, we need to come up with solutions that are sustainable yet viable for our business. Projects must be sustainable.”

Managing projects across languages, cultures, and differing resource availability can be difficult. “Time zones,” he says with a laugh when reflecting on some of his work’s biggest challenges. It’s not uncommon for him to start business meetings with partners in South Korea early morning and continue the workday with meetings till late evening with partners in West Africa and South America. But what ties it all together and makes his work possible, he says, is the “common language” that project management standards provide.

“I think the best benefit of achieving my PMP certification in 2016 was the ‘international language’ that it gave me,” he says. “Project management gives us a common vocabulary, and that’s very beneficial since we work in countries around the world.” While he may have to help some local partners get up to speed with respect to new technologies or terms with which they may not yet be familiar, the key steps of project management—initiation, planning, execution, monitoring—give international teams with diverse backgrounds and experience a shared foundation from which to work.

As he reflects on the projects he’s led, from the Jebel Ali Rail Terminal, enhancing UAE's logistics infrastructure, and the expansion of DP World’s Luanda Port in Angola, Abdulla says that he assesses success by time, scope, and budget, but two other important questions help him measure outcomes, too: “Have I learned something new? Am I proud of what I have done on this project?” For all of the projects he’s led, he can confidently answer both questions with a resounding “Yes.”