About
Forty-three years in your industry. Then this.
Most coaches understand people but have never built anything. Most builders have never truly led people. Simplified Advisory Services exists in the gap, and its founder has spent a working lifetime on both sides of the table.
How a project delivery man ended up coaching
I came into coaching from the client side.
In 2009, when the financial crisis hit the UAE property boom, our portfolio of projects was all in construction stage and buyers were hesitating on payments. I had to make most of my delivery team at IFA Hotels & Resorts redundant. And then I was let go myself.
That was a brutal wake-up call about the risks carried on the developer side. I realised if I didn’t change, I’d just repeat the same story in a different company.
So I hired a coach. Within three months, my mindset had shifted so much that I stepped into a more senior COO role at Emirates Land Group, right in the middle of the aftermath. That experience sold me on what real coaching does: not theory, but a structured way to see yourself and your options differently. And it convinced me that leaders can, and should, coach their own team members and peers.
Over the next decade I worked with three different coaches at different career stages. In 2021 I became a Certified High Performance Coach myself, and applied the work on complex projects, including the design of ACWA Power’s sustainable headquarters in Riyadh, using the 6E Leadership Framework with my own teams.
In February 2025 I pivoted to coaching full-time. And I still retain my own master coach today. When you work with me, you’re getting someone who treats this as a craft.
Let’s make collaboration happen.
The seats I’ve actually sat in
Coaching that respects deadlines, site conditions and delivery pressure has to come from someone who has carried them. The career, briefly:
My first 14 years in South Africa gave me a commercial and practical grounding across the full built-environment value chain: civil infrastructure and structural design, site-based project management, quantity surveying, advanced structural design, and qualification as a Professional Engineer. I then learned the realities of profitable delivery as a contractor managing unionised labour and complex projects, followed by client-side turnkey development, building the technical credibility, commercial acumen, collaborative skill and leadership judgement needed to understand every party’s position and create outcomes in which the project, the business and its people can win.
For the next three decades in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, I led client-side delivery for commercial real-estate developers and major organisations through the opportunities and pressures of a boom-and-bust market. From hotel, leisure, retail, residential and mixed-use portfolios to landmark headquarters and sustainable development work, I learned how high performers create certainty amid complexity: by setting clear outcomes, building capable and aligned teams, making commercially sound decisions and maintaining trusted relationships with boards, authorities, designers and contractors. That lived experience now informs my work as a high-performance coach for leaders responsible for projects and businesses that matter.
What working with me is like
Direct
You’ll hear what you need to hear, not what’s comfortable, delivered with respect, never aggression. Truth is kinder than comfort.
Grounded
No theory that collapses on a Monday morning. Everything is worked against your live project, your team, your actual constraints.
Exact
No session ends on a vague intention. You leave knowing precisely what you’re doing, by when, and how you’ll know it’s done.