Fouad El Jisr attended the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne in Switzerland from 1964 to 1967 and received his BS in Civil Engineering. His concentration in civil structures led him to work briefly with the Bureau d’Autoroute, before he returned to Beirut in 1968. From 1968 to 1974, Fouad El Jisr held various design and management positions at the Civil Defense Departments of the Lebanese army and served as a freelance structural engineering in the private sector.

Prior to the onset of the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1989), Fouad El Jisr joined the recently formed CASSIA Consulting Engineers in Abu Dhabi office as principal structural engineer and manager. Fouad was principal designer on such notable projects as the Hamdan City Center (Abu Dhabi), City Stars Heliopolis (Cairo), Sofitel Seoul (Korea), Regency Hotel (Abu Dhabi), The Omayad Center (Syria), British Aircraft Corporation Compound (Riyadh), Khoury Tower (Abu Dhabi), Gasco Compound (Abu Dhabi), Al Ahlam Tower (Beirut), The structural Rehabilitation of the landmark Saint George Hotel (Beirut).

From 1977 to 1987, he returned to Beirut and founded Fouad El Jisr Engineering with a subsidiary in Cyprus, from where he worked on numerous projects throughout the Middle East, with a concentration in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Pakistan. He worked as Project Manager to Oger Liban, the developers of the landmark People’s Palace development in Damascus. Finally, in 1992, he merged his activities with the CASSIA Group’s Beirut offices and joined the firm as Director of Structural Engineering and principal designer on the $1.2b City Stars Heliopolis development in Cairo, an 850,000m2 mixed-use commercial development completed in 2007.

In November 2008, CASSIA launched its first major residential development scheme, a 14 storey building in the heart of Ashrafieh, Beirut’s cultural and art centre; a project now vested under Fouad’s control and scheduled for completion in 2010.

In his capacity as Principal Senior Structural Engineer, Fouad El Jisr frequently visits other structural Principals at CASSIA’s overseas offices in Egypt, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain during the concept and schematic phases of major developments.