To be fair, in 2014 he’s had a strong start. In March, the company announced that it had won $37mn of contracts in Abu Dhabi to build new headquarter office facilities for Daman Insurance and Culture Authority Abu Dhabi.

A month later, it revealed it had picked up a $35mn deal to refurbish all 393 rooms at the Kempinski Mall of the Emirates hotel – one of a string of hotel projects the company has won.

“If you look at the evolution of ISG across other global markets, we have primarily started in the corporate office market, moved into the hospitality sector and then into the engineering sector at the high-technology end, such as data centres,” explained McCready.

“We feel we are firmly on track to successfully repeat this strategy within the Middle East. When clients have a technically challenging, mission-critical project they choose ISG,” he said.

He added that the firm had set an objective last year to treble the size of its UAE business from $50mn a year to $150mn by 2016, and said it was “firmly on course” to achieve this through landing new and repeat business.