Order, out of complexity.

I am a mechanical engineer. The first thing I designed that actually ran was a small paper-handling machine, built with a group of friends at university. It was not the most sophisticated machine presented that year. Six of us put it together over several months out of parts we pulled from scrapyards, because we had very little budget to work with. But we built it ourselves, and seeing it run after all those nights of work was deeply satisfying. When we explained how it had been built, one of the department’s most senior professors stood up and asked to see it run. I have been chasing that same moment ever since.

After university, I joined a large industrial engineering organisation in the steel industry. A few years later, I moved to a newly established engineering company with an ambition I recognised: to become the best in the world at what we did. I wanted to be part of building that. Over the next twenty years, we built the team, the engineering standards, the technology base and the plants themselves, in many countries for some of the largest producers in their markets.

We learned by doing. We made mistakes, improved the way we worked, built stronger teams and took on increasingly demanding projects. Eventually, we were delivering technology and plants in markets where much larger and more established international companies had been working for decades. I am proud of what we achieved together.

That success taught me something. Once a company reaches the goal it set out with, the challenge changes, and doing more of the same is not an answer. What I wanted next needed a different structure: to explore new technologies, improve how projects are delivered, create opportunities for curious people around me, and keep developing myself.

GAYA Engineering is that structure.

I want it to be a place where good engineers can do ambitious work, keep learning, enjoy what they are doing and take real ownership, without having to give up the rest of their lives to do it. A company that chooses its projects not only because they are profitable, but because there is something worth building, improving or learning from. A company that works with clients, suppliers and technology partners as one team, with mutual respect and a shared ambition to create something better.

The idea is not to build the biggest engineering company but a good one: independent, profitable, curious and capable of standing on its own. Over time, I want GAYA Engineering to develop its own capabilities, apply new technologies and, where we can add something new, develop technologies of our own.

The name GAYA comes from Gaia, born out of Chaos. For me, that is what engineering is often about: many people, technologies, decisions and constraints, brought together into something that works.

Umut Çiftçi — Founder, GAYA Engineering