On Campus

On Time, On Budget

He came to the Weizmann Institute in 1960 because, like him, it was just starting out. “I thought I could grow with it,” says Abraham Dines, Head of the Construction and Physical Plant Maintenance Division.

Dines earned a degree in electrical engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology a few years prior to joining the Weizmann Institute’s maintenance staff as an engineer. Before long, he was heading all of its construction projects. As the Weizmann Institute campus grew, from a mere 10 buildings and several bungalows at that time to more than 100 buildings today, so did Dines’s reputation for completing work on time and on budget.
 

His talent for staying on course may have originated from his first aspiration as a youngster to become a train engineer. Unlike many others who cherished that dream, he studied at a school in Kazakhstan that specialized in locomotion. Son of a Zionist activist, he came to Israel with his family at the age of 18 already knowing the language and quickly adjusted to his new surroundings.

Of his reputation as an infallible mover, he says, “The Weizmann Institute is like a family to me, soI try to work innovatively and effectively. To do that, it is imperative to know how to turn an obstacle into an opportunity.”

The Construction & Physical Plant Maintenance Division is supported by the Raoul and Graziella de Picciotto Fund for Campus Maintenance and Infrastructure.