This is the Project Director behind the most digitized project in the Middle East
Miguel Monteiro is not your typical project director. He is an architect by trade and despite his artistic traits, now manages the construction of the highly prestigious 340-meter Uptown Dubai tower in JLT.
Surprisingly, that is not the only unconventional thing about him. He is a triathlete with various ironman appearances, a motorcycle enthusiast, an MBA graduate from INSEAD, and a construction technology ambassador for the industry.
During our latest podcast, he joyfully rolled out a precise reflection of his adventurous career and with his deep voice and quiet humility, he spoke about the experiences that shaped who he is today.
The moments that defined his life
Born in a middle-class family of business owners in Portugal, Miguel learned that there’s no food on the table without honesty and hard work. Encouraged by his father, he spent his teenage summers working as an assistant to masons, plumbers, and mechanics and speaks with respect for people on the “front-line” because he’s been in their shoes. He might not be acutely aware of his charisma, but the people around him on the construction site are, perhaps because of his innate ability to empathize with their fears and desires.
You don’t need to own a business to be an entrepreneur
Miguel feels lucky to have experienced the army for 6 months right after graduating from college. As he says, the experience fostered commitment and discipline, attributes he kept forever and that complemented his entrepreneurial orientation very well.
His father’s shock when he found out Miguel was going to be the first immigrant in the family was not enough to cage his adventurous spirit. After the army, he moved to Germany to work for Lindner Group, sneaking his way into project management despite his not so relevant educational background. Like a skilled knight carrying his sword by his side, Miguel carried his family’s entrepreneurial ethos with him throughout his career and used it to cut through all the obstacles that came his way as he was traveling across countries like Angola, where he eventually became a business owner himself.
Pull (don’t push) your people forward
Leadership is an overused word these days, but Miguel’s attitude can’t help but make us think he is the truest epitome of that. Soaked by the river of knowledge at INSEAD, he learned to wash away self-interest, keep aside his opinions, and as he says “see the world with clear eyes”. His key takeaway from the world-renowned University was not only poetic but practical: he says he avoids giving instructions to his team but instead seeks to ask powerful questions to give them a chance to come up with solutions he could never think of himself. His demeanor is self-effacing and talks proudly about the strong characters he works with at BESIX while consciously choosing honest, productive conflict over quiet artificial harmony every day of the week.
If you don’t have a mission you don’t have anything
Nothing Miguel says or does in his current work at BESIX is an accident, a chance, or anything but a calculated fragment of the grander vision of the company, which is “to excel at creating sustainable solutions for a better future”. These words are stapled all around their office space in Dubai to keep reminding the people of why they do what they do. Quite astonishingly, Miguel admits his interest in innovation is relatively recent, which makes the fact that 5 construction technologies are used on his project even more admirable. His perpetual curiosity, enthusiasm, and constant drive for innovation might be precisely what the industry needs to overcome the inertia that has piled up during the last century.
Listen to Miguel’s full story here:
