Adnan’s role at Gleeds is to keep procurement moving at pace for our data centre clients in SEA, while effectively controlling risk. He leads end-to-end procurement for projects across the region – from strategy and sourcing, through tendering, evaluation and negotiation, to contract award.
Working closely with project, engineering, cost and legal stakeholders, Adnan aligns commercial decisions to clients’ programme and technical requirements, while ensuring governance, compliance and auditability. Alongside managing supplier engagement and performance, he supports change management, and helps with resolving commercial issues to protect cost, schedule and quality outcomes.
According to Adnan, his greatest motivation is delivering tangible outcomes: “putting robust, value-driven contracts in place that help teams build and operate critical infrastructure safely, on time, and with clear commercial protections.”
His proudest achievement since joining Gleeds has been becoming a reliable extension of the client-side procurement function. Through this, he’s been able to drive programmes forward successfully – progressing contract awards to meet tight timelines and delivering significant cost savings via value-driven negotiations.
Ultimately, I take pride in enabling projects to move faster with confidence, while managing risk and maintaining strong supplier relationships.
Data centres sit at the crossroads of mission-critical infrastructure, fast-paced delivery and constant innovation, and this is what most appeals to Adnan about the sector. He especially enjoys solving complex commercial problems – bringing stakeholders and suppliers into alignment, and improving processes so that decisions are transparent, fair and auditable.
“The work is highly technical and time-sensitive, so procurement has a real impact on outcomes,” he says. He also finds the challenges of working across SEA particularly interesting: “Each market has different regulations, supplier maturity and capacity constraints.”
Adnan was drawn to apply for a role at Gleeds due to our reputation for independent, client-focused advice and strong commercial capability on complex, high-value projects.
The opportunity to support major data centre programmes, work with knowledgeable teams across the business, and bring structure, transparency and best practice to procurement decisions really appealed to me.
Gleeds’ culture of respect also chimes powerfully with Adnan’s own values. “In procurement, respect shows up in how we engage the market and our stakeholders,” he says. “We listen first, we’re fair and transparent, and we treat suppliers as long-term partners while still holding firm on governance and standards.”
Outside of work, Adnan is a fan of anime and manga. And if his career hadn’t taken the direction it did, he would have opened a “quaint coffee shop that sells home-made comfort food”!