Since 2005, Martin has worked for Ramboll as a structural engineer. After working for Ramboll in Denmark for some years, the opportunity to go to Dubai arose. With his wife on maternity leave, he found it the perfect time to seek more international challenges.
”Some of the most extreme projects in the world are carried out here in Dubai. Everything has to be the world’s tallest or biggest and the architects really get the chance to be creative. For a structural engineer this is a real playground,” says Martin about why he chose to move to Dubai.
Skyscraper city
“Ramboll has many interesting projects in Dubai which are very different from typical Danish projects. We have just sent out the schematic design for “Define Vision”, a building consisting of five different towers on top of a shared 4 storey basement car parking. It is located at the water front in a new gigantic area in Dubai, called Dubai Waterfront. These towers will contain offices, shops and residencies as well as three swimming pools,” Martin explains about his current assignment.
The detailed design phase for the Define Vision project has just started. The engineers have been given 12 weeks to finish, so the understanding of fast design becomes a reality. “It will for sure be a very interesting but also a challenging project to work on,” Martin adds.
Culture clash
Working abroad in an office with at least ten different nationalities, will give rise to some challenges. Design codes are different (British or American) and the design software is different from the Danish.
“It has been a fun and educational experience to move here. Apart from the purely professional things, such as the way you design and build, other calculation methods and calculation software, you learn so much on the personal level too. About other cultures, languages and not least yourself. With more than 20 nationalities at the office it really puts things into perspective,” Martin explains. Despite the cultural differences, there are some common characteristics: “One thing we all have in common is the desire to deal with new challenging tasks both at work and privately, as many of us are expats.”