20 Years Of Protec

20 YEARS OF PROTEC

AS PROTEC TURNS 20, PETER IANTORNO VISITS THE COMPANY’S HQ IN DUBAI TO SPEAK TO OWNER AND CEO, STEPHEN LAKIN, ABOUT HIS PERSONAL HIGHLIGHTS OVER THE YEARS.

Dubai Investments Park (DIP) is awash with offices, factories and warehouses belonging to some of the UAE’s biggest and best companies, and from the moment the large steel gates to Protec’s expansive DIP headquarters swung open and we stepped inside, it was clear that this is an operation to rival any of them. A cavernous facility comprising a stylish office space as well as a series of warehouses in which some of the company’s giant stash of equipment is housed. It’s a fitting home for a business that has established itself as a cornerstone of the Middle East’s events industry since it was formed in 1999. Now, 20 years on

from the company’s inception, Protec’s owner and CEO, Stephen Lakin, has fond memories of how it all began. “I started Protec when I saw an opportunity to work on a huge job; the launch of the Faisaliah Tower – the first skyscraper in Riyadh,” he revealed to TPMEA over a coffee in the company’s plush meeting room. “I’d heard that the Faisaliah Tower job was out to tender, so I got in touch with the Faisal Foundation and they said they would see us the following day for a pitch in Riyadh.” And sure enough, after seeing what Lakin could deliver, the Faisal Foundation was so

impressed that it awarded him the job – and at the full $7.6 million price quoted. With such a huge job needing a lot of equipment, Lakin needed to act fast in order to source everything needed for the project. “We didn’t have any kit at first,” he reminisced. “They wanted to keep the equipment in Riyadh for six weeks so, with shipping and logistics taken into account, it was going to be a 15 or 16-week hire. “We soon realised that on those timescales, it was far more economical for us to buy the kit rather than rent it. After the job finished, we were left with a convoy of 20 40ft lorries full to the roof driving our equipment back into Dubai.

Top left: Dubai Shopping Festival opening ceremony; above left: Faisaliah Tower; Top right: Protec owner and CEO, Stephen Lakin; above right: Dubai Media City opening ceremony.

What do you do with a bunch of second-hand kit? We used it to start a company… and that was the start of Protec.”

RAPID GROWTH Following the success of the Faisaliah Tower job, Protec grew exponentially. “We started to make noise about the fact that we existed, and we ended up getting more work as a result,” Lakin recalled. “After the Faisaliah Tower we worked on the launch of Dubai Media City.” As is common in the Middle East, Protec was brought into the project at short notice, so had to scramble to pull together the equipment and the team. “We were given the job just 10 days before the delivery date,” Lakin chuckled. “Thankfully this was immediately after we’d finished work on the Faisaliah Tower so, as luck would have it, all of the freelancers we had used for that job apart from one were available for the project. We brought them all over to work on the launch and it went really well.” Another formative job in Protec’s history was the Dubai Shopping Festival. “That was a massive show,” Lakin recalled. “We brought in five international dance troupes from around the world. The stage was 90m wide and we built

three hydraulic lifts with built-in staircases to elevate the entire central part of the stage up to around 15m in the air. There were five giant globes – representing the different countries that the dancers came from – and each troupe emerged on stage through a different globe. It was really effective.” Between all these projects, Protec accumulated a lot of equipment and hired new full-time staff, expanding its operation rapidly. “We bought a huge amount of kit,” Lakin commented. “We also bought Vari-Lite Middle East. That meant we went from 12 employees to a staff of 21, and we also acquired all the equipment – the VL5s, VL6s and VL2s.”

KEEPING THE FAITH Of course, it hasn’t all been plane sailing for Protec and, like any company that has endured 20 years at the sharp end of the industry, it has overcome its fair share of turbulent times. “T he market crash brought about after the September 11th attacks in 2001 had a massive effect on the business. We were almost wiped out,” Lakin reflected. “We were left with lots of kit, lots of people but no work. Thankfully our creditors at the time in the UK were very

understanding and kept faith in us. It took around six months for us to recover and we’ve grown and grown from then on, really.” Today Protec has expanded its reach to cover the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia and the Far East, with fully equipped facilities in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Riyadh and Birmingham. Such is the company’s growth, it is now backed with an investment in excess of $85 million-worth of the latest technology in lighting, sound, audio-visual, staging, rigging, hydraulics and motor control equipment, motion tracking, robotics, drones, SFX, backline and conferencing equipment. A la rge portion of that equipment was bought to service Protec’s continued affiliation with IDEX (the International Defence Exhibition & Conference). Held every two years in Abu Dhabi, IDEX is the largest show of its kind in the Middle East, and has proved to be an extremely profitable one for Protec. “We did 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019,” Lakin began. “They are probably one of the biggest shows in the world now. It’s nice because every time we work with them the military get more and more used to us, which means as well as designing the show, we now control the whole military side of things as well, including aircraft