A legacy at the service of nation-building
Sogelec’s history is rooted in sustainable development of national scale and impact. Sogelec Engineering was founded in Beirut in 1977, to the backdrop of a civil war that had destroyed much of the city’s infrastructure. It was a tenacious call to rebuild and strengthen this infrastructure against all odds. Through its services, Sogelec extended a lifeline to governmental and non-governmental institutions in education, housing, construction healthcare, and hospitality – sectors that were critical to the country’s survival and prosperity in the decades that followed.
In its drive to transform crisis into opportunity, Sogelec has since cemented its reputation across sectors, and broadened its network to a wide array of partners and clients. In 1995, Ibrahim Mhanna and Wahib Chaiban, both established businessmen and industry leaders in their own right, joined forces to manage and expand Sogelec’s operations. Their power partnership would help catapult the company into new growth avenues, under a wider ambition to contribute to the development of the Lebanese construction and real estate field through world-class electrical contracting services. Gradually, Sogelec Engineering expanded its activities to electrical engineering and contracting, panel board assembly, and maintenance and aftersales services. In 2006, Sogelec entered a new territory, launching in Qatar as an affiliated company under the name of Sogelec Iskan for electrical contracting W.L.L.
Building on its strong track record for over three decades, Sogelec evolved and grew its Qatari operations in the early 2000s through a spate of partnerships and projects. Sogelec’s current project portfolio spans a wide spectrum of MEP (Mechanical, electrical and plumbing) services and nation-building projects, from community housing projects to schools; universities; commercial centers; government buildings; medical facilities and hospitals; and hospitality mega developments, among others.
In 2013, Sogelec earned its due recognition and certification from Schneider Electric for its service excellence and technical expertise. Today, Sogelec Engineering’s panel board assembly services are compliant with world-class IEC61439-1 standards, and are regularly and closely audited by Schneider.
Powering a sustainable tomorrow
More than four decades into our history of landmark projects and mega developments across the region, our industry is proving ever more competitive and fast-paced – and this, against a backdrop of an increasingly uncertain global economy. Much has changed since we established Sogelec in Beirut in 1977 during what was, no doubt, a critical juncture for our then home market and for the region. Fortune favors the bold, and even more so in the midst of an uncertainty that had reduced many businesses to rubble. Our drive to transform times of crisis into tides of opportunity has not only helped build our business on resilient ground, but equally, shape a then widely underserved Lebanese real estate market.
In 1995, our co-founders Ibrahim Mhanna and Wahib Chaiban expanded our operations into electrical services contracting. Since then, every cog in our well-oiled machine has been carefully placed and replaced towards building a future-proof business beyond industry and geographic boundaries. Our flexible project management models, strong network of like-minded partners, advanced software and hardware, and world-class HSE and quality assurance frameworks have merely formed the foundation of our successful expansion into the Qatari market in 2006. Today, our ambition goes far beyond this baseline to create new growth avenues.
From energy efficiency and regeneration, to smart city connectivity, to IoT-powered outcome-based design, to the rise of prefabrication and process automation, the global MEP industry is experiencing yet another exciting paradigm shift. In tandem, our clients and suppliers are rethinking their entire modus operandi and infrastructure towards the economic and environmental sustainability of their operations. So are we.
We will work alongside these partners to create value beyond products and services, unlock new avenues of growth, and reimagine the future of the MEP industry. In Qatar, our next growth stage is focally driven by facility management, national infrastructure projects, and the evolving oil and gas industry – pillars of Qatar’s national legacy beyond the FIFA World Cup 2022™.
Our people form the backbone to our past, present, and future success. As we usher in yet another chapter in our journey, our power network remains a diverse and qualified pool of thinkers and does who work and win as one. The growth of our people has always come first, and that of our business has always followed.