With family roots in Saudi Arabia, Abdulla Ahmed Nass was born in Muharraq in 1936, the eldest of four sons.

Nass showed qualities of leadership and an appetite for hard work and accepting responsibility by taking ownership of the difficult tasks on a construction site in order to gain hands-on experience. These strengths of character later allowed him to establish the Nass Group and build a formidably strong and respected industrial conglomerate and construction powerhouse benchmarked by the best.
Nass entered Bahrain’s first technical school to study English and mathematics at the age of 12 where his practical acumen was soon apparent. During the afternoons he would spend time in a local workshop learning about engines and mechanical items and becoming increasingly independent and self-reliant.
During the period he was at the technical school in Manama, one of his uncles already working in the contracting industry in Saudi Arabia, mentioned that a construction company in Dhahran was looking for an ambitious and trustworthy individual with technical knowledge and proficiency in English and Arabic. Nass was recommended and set off from Bahrain at the age of 15, confident of meeting the challenges that lay ahead.
In Dhahran, one of his responsibilities was translating Aramco bid documents from English into Arabic and quite soon Nass became a self-taught estimator, always willing to learn from his experience and becoming more proficient in building and construction. 
“You have to remember that I started my own working life in Dhahran as a jack of all trades to a certain extent. I would be working the cranes, doing carpentry and driving the bulldozers.  In addition, when laying a wall down I would know how many bricks would be required, how many masons would be needed and the level of efficiency to meet the schedules. On site in Dhahran I would typically work for eight hours and then another four hours in the evening working in the office. I even used to deliver wages to the workers and wanted to keep the whole site operation going and was also keen to look at the actual process of construction in all its detail,” recalls Nass.
Nass worked in the Eastern Province for six years learning the construction and contracting business and when he reached the age of 21 he had made such an impression that he was rewarded with a partnership in the contracting company. A further five years would follow in Dhahran until 1961 by which time the construction sector in Saudi Arabia was beginning to slow down.
Always a positive thinker, Nass grasped the opportunity and decided to start his own company as he knew he had the necessary skills and experience, and determination to realise his vision.
With a young family to support, in 1962, he formed the Abdulla Ahmed Nass Company in Bahrain.
“I certainly do not believe in luck but rather that one can succeed through hard work and application and that, with God’s will, one can be successful. I always believed that by starting at the bottom of the ladder and not really minding doing the difficult things I would be successful. When eventually I started my own company I had learned from the mistakes I had made.  I have never believed in buying business but that our reputation and company performance would be based upon delivering proper quality work. If you have the expertise and do it right, then over the long run, the future is good. Today, our corporate principles are based on competitive prices and quality performance, and we always listen to our clients and understand what they require. Therefore, hard work and the principles of doing good quality work have supported our group’s progress over the years. As a company, we always listen and if necessary, we are willing to rectify mistakes as part of our contractual obligations and we always learn by these experiences,” continues Nass.
Nass has six sons and three daughters, all working in various divisions of the group which has around 10,000 employees, a fifth of whom are Bahraini with the rest drawn from all nationalities.
“I don’t work as hard as I used to do as the boys have taken over, each within their own field, and they do a good job. I taught them well and to an extent, as chairman, I act as an advisor and strategist now, although I continue to work every day and like to think that sometimes I give good advice. Nevertheless, I take the old-fashioned view that I am still the boss and have no serious plans to retire,” concludes Nass.
Nass can be rightly proud of what has been achieved by the company he built — an industrial and commercial powerhouse that is ranked as one of the best of its kind internationally and a Bahrain company with international expertise benchmarked by the best that delivers quality engineering and construction as well as trading and related services within its diversified portfolio.