About Manara
The intersection of heavy civil and software
Manara exists because construction operations problems rarely get solved by people who understand only half of them.
The story
Why this company exists
Manara was founded by Ali Wagih, a Professional Engineer who spent more than six years managing complex heavy civil and marine construction projects: the concrete, steel, tides, and schedules kind, not the metaphorical kind.
Along the way, the same pattern kept showing up. Skilled teams losing hours to manual reporting. Systems that don't talk to each other. Software bought and abandoned. And more recently, a flood of AI promises with very little practical guidance on what's actually worth doing.
Ali also has a computer science background and builds production software: AI assistants, dashboards, automation workflows, and document intelligence systems. Manara combines the two. We understand how construction work actually runs, and we can build the tools to run it better.
The name is a small tell. Manara (منارة) is Arabic for lighthouse: a fixed point that helps you navigate. That's the job. Not more noise, just a clear signal about where to go next.
منارة · manara
Arabic for lighthouse
Credentials
One person, both skill sets
Professional Engineer
P.Eng. with more than six years managing complex heavy civil and marine construction projects in British Columbia.
Software builder
Computer science background and hands-on experience building AI tools, dashboards, automation workflows, and document intelligence systems that run in real operations.
Operations experience
Project management exposure to project controls, month-end reporting, accounts payable and receivable, and the ERP systems that run construction businesses.
Principles
How we work
Start with the bottleneck, not the buzzword
We begin with the business problem and work backwards to the technology, never the other way around.
Build what teams actually adopt
A perfect system nobody uses is worth exactly nothing. We design for the crews and coordinators who will live in it.
Measure outcomes, not sophistication
Success is hours saved, errors caught, and decisions made earlier. Not how impressive the architecture diagram looks.
Stay in the room
Recommendations are the start of the work, not the end of it. We design, build, implement, and support.
Work with someone who has done both jobs
Book a free discovery call. Thirty minutes, no pitch, practical next steps either way.