04/09/2026
"In the end, it is your work that will teach you, not any one person. And if you do not love your work, you will not understand it."
Engr. David M. Consunji
(November 2, 1921 – September 4, 2017)
Today, we remember Engr. David M. Consunji and the passion for building that defined his life and career.
More than the landmarks he built, DM, founder of the DMCI Group of Companies and the “Grandfather of the Philippine Construction Industry,” left behind timeless lessons on hard work, curiosity, craftsmanship, and the value of loving one's profession.
In his memoir, A Passion to Build, he shared the mindset that kept the flame burning throughout his career:
“I had been asked a few times if I had ever experienced ‘burn-out’ in my profession. I would always say that I had never experienced such a thing. I guess it is because I am, by nature, a curious person, and it has been my mental habit to find out not only how a thing works but also how to make it work better. As a result, I never run out of new things to learn.
But more important than this is the simple fact that I love construction. A lot of people might ask: But what is there to love in construction? As the Japanese would say, construction is difficult, dirty, and dangerous. This is all true, but for some reason, I never saw it that way. I always saw beyond the dirt and the danger. I saw its dynamism, and the challenges it posed to my mind and my practical abilities. I enjoyed both teaching and learning from my co-workers, especially my foremen, and I relished the camaraderie that working hard together brought.
Luckily for me, I seem to have not just the passion but the knack, what we call oido, for construction.
It was generally easy for me to find solutions to the problems we encountered at the jobsite. And even if some solutions did not come easily, I always loved the process of finding them.
Looking back, I had the great fortune of having around me people who taught me, sometimes unwittingly, the things I would need in my profession. I had an older brother, Jorge, who was relentlessly curious about how things worked. And so together, Jorge and I would break things apart and then put them back together. When we were living on our own in Pandacan, we would tear down a wall and "renovate" our house. As young men, we stayed with an uncle, Tiyo Indong, who could do amazing things with his hands. From him, we learned how to make fish pens, poultry houses, and nipa huts from scratch.
And of course, from the beginning, my mother always emphasized the value of hard work, and made sure we knew how to work with our hands. I did house work as a young boy, like all my siblings, and I even had my own poultry on our yard. So I grew up without an aversion to manual work that many young people, including young engineers, now have.
These days, it is not uncommon to hear a young engineer say that he did not take up five years of college to do manual work. In fact, it would do the young engineers a lot of good if they had some practical courses in college, like carpentry just as we did in UP when we were studying to be engineers. This, to me, is essential if you intend to have a career in building. Unfortunately, these courses are no longer part of the current engineering curriculum in UP, or elsewhere.
I also believe in the value of serving an apprenticeship. When I started working, I made sure | learned from the experts. My most invaluable apprenticeship was with my cousin, Ricardo Consunji, who taught me many things about construction years before I put up my own firm.
Early in my career, I was like a sponge-absorbing everything I could about construction from experienced foremen, fellow engineers, and other builders. I would read a lot of international books and journals to keep myself updated. I made sure I knew about the leading edge technology as far as building was concerned. All these readings complemented my learnings on the jobsite.
But it is on the jobsite that you will learn the most. Everyday, something happens, a new problem crops up, and you've got to be attentive, or the opportunity to learn, to innovate, to find a new solution, will pass you by. In construction, there are a hundred and one ways of doing certain things, and there is always a way to simplify a process, to do it faster, to make it more economical. But if you don't have the passion for building, you will not have the attentiveness, the resourcefulness, and the patience that you need to do things better. As I always say: "In the end, it is your work that will teach you, not any one person. And if you do not love your work, you will not understand it."
Source: A Passion to Build: A Memoir of David M. Consunji
