Leonid Monosov — from Foreman to Executive Manager. A Forty-Year-Long Journey

Moscow is a city that can impress anyone with its monumental architecture. The modern image of the capital is the result of decades of efforts by many construction teams. Iconic landmarks were built by the best professionals who dedicated their entire lives to the industry. One of these people is Leonid Monosov, Honored Builder of the Russian Federation, whose work experience spans across more than forty years.

Choosing a Career

Leonid Monosov was born in 1958 in Belarus. His hometown, Mazyr, was located not far from Gomel. This is where he spent the first five years of his life before moving to Moscow with his father. The future construction engineer grew up in Sokolniki, Moscow, and attended School No. 315, which was considered one of the best in the capital at the time. They taught advanced physics and mathematics here and even had their own observatory.

The acquired knowledge helped Leonid Monosov pass the entrance exams to the construction program at MIIT (later renamed Russian University of Transport); and in 1980, he successfully defended his final thesis.

At the time, any organization in the industry would be happy to accept a young specialist with a major in Industrial and Civil Engineering, but recent Soviet graduates could not simply choose where to work themselves. Having received free education, yesterday’s students were allocated to organizations that applied for workers to their university and had to stay there for at least three years. Students with excellent grades were the first to see the list of vacancies. Since all the conditions were known in advance, they could select the most promising career from the list. However, they were all equal in terms of money — everyone started out as a foreman with a salary of one and a half hundred rubles a month.

Thanks to his good grades, Leonid Monosov was able to get a job at Glavmospromstroy, one of the city-forming enterprises in the capital. The position of “construction site foreman” only sounded nice on paper. In actual practice, young engineers were faced with the reality of having to handle everything related to the quality and sequence of the work processes themselves. Every aspect of the work required thorough control — from materials and equipment to reports and personnel placement. And since the salary of the team depended on the work of the foreman, novice engineers were constantly under a lot of pressure.

Their further career depended solely on their organizational talents. Good managers never stayed unnoticed at Glavmospromstroy — they rapidly moved up the career ladder. Leonid Monosov’s path from foreman to chief engineer took only five years. By 1986, he had become the head of the construction department, and his further professional biography was no less successful. He was eventually promoted to deputy CEO of the company and managed its biggest projects in the 1990s.

Biggest Milestones

Glavmospromstroy was founded in 1972 as a division responsible for the construction of industrial facilities. However, its potential was much greater. The enterprise built theaters, museums, sports venues, hotels, and urban facilities. When Leonid Monosov began his career in the company, there were over 72 thousand people working in its subdivisions. It was a real talent factory, which valued strong performance and true professionals.

Here is only a short list of the many industrial facilities built by Glavmospromstroy:

1. ZiL and AZLK.
2. The Krasny Proletary plant and Moscow Metallurgical Plant.
3. The Parizhskaya Communa and Udarnitsa factories.
4. The Meat Processing Plant and Istro-Senezhskaya poultry plant.

By 1980, the company had built a number of sports facilities for the Moscow Olympics, including the Grand Sports Arena of the Luzhniki, the Olympic Sports Complex, and the Sokolniki Sports Palace.

Before the perestroika, the enterprise had an almost ministerial status. The capital’s development program was determined by the general construction plan, and various institutions got the approval of their projects from Glavpromstroy. The scale of the company’s operations can be assessed by the great number of facilities commissioned during this period.

In 1984, Glavpromstroy began the construction of the building complex on Academician Sakharov Avenue. It was one of the few Moscow projects built in collaboration with other socialist states. These buildings were were originally intended as international banking offices and their design was inspired by the Roman Colosseum. The foreign partners helped with technology and supplied finishing materials and windows. The project was completed in 1989.

1982 was marked by the grand opening of the President Hotel — a high-end hotel for people with a high social status. At the time, it was one of the most modern buildings in the capital. The stone for the exterior was carefully selected to fit specific patterns and textures. A group of outstanding artists was invited to paint the interior. Finishing elements, lamps and stained glass windows were brought from abroad.

After 1990, when the enterprise became a commercial organization called Mospromstroy JSC, it continued to work on large-scale projects. One of the main focuses of the company was state-of-the-art commercial property. These projects included the Marriott International hotels, one of the Metro wholesale stores, as well as the Toyota, Lexus, and Yamaha car and motorcycle retail and service shop complex.

Number One Cathedral in Moscow

The 1990s brought about the idea of reviving places of worship. It was never only about Orthodox churches — the company also restored and built synagogues and mosques. In 1995, Mospromstroy finished the Church of St. George the Victorious on Poklonnaya Hill, and in the next few years, built the Memorial Mosque and a synagogue in the village of Otradnoye.

Its most ambitious project in the mid-1990s was the restoration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been destroyed in 1937 — the government was planning to build the grand Palace of the Soviets in its place, but the war got in the way. The pit that was excavated there stayed untouched for a long time; and in the 1950s, it was turned into the Moskva outdoor swimming pool, which at the time was one of the largest pools in the world.

By 1994, the sports facility had not been operational for a long time. That year, in response to the powerful public movement, the city administration decided to rebuild the cathedral. Today, Leonid Monosov names this project among his most complex tasks from a technological point of view. Many famous Russian architects, artists, and sculptors took part in its implementation and Mospromstroy was tasked with the construction itself.

When the pool basin was dismantled, the builders discovered a concrete foundation underneath, which had once been laid for the Palace of the Soviets. The removal of a hill during its initial construction resulted in a 15 meter high space between the footing of the palace and the future floor level of the cathedral. After the foundation was modernized and reinforced with concrete, this space became the first level of the cathedral complex, where today we can find:

• the Church of the Transfiguration
• a council hall with a winter garden and mosaics and frescoes;
• chambers for the patriarch and distinguished guests;
• the Holy Synod hall;
• a dining hall for 1200 guests;
• a library;
• a theological academy and school of icon painting;
• a parking space;
• engineering and utility service rooms.

The second level, where the Cathedral of Christ the Savior itself is located, was recreated according to the design of 1812, but with some changes. The bricks in the walls were replaced with reinforced concrete slabs; and instead of stone cladding, the builders used marble from the Kibik-Kordonsky and Koelginsky deposits. The central altar was decorated with marble brought from the Holy Land. To create a thin and durable coating, the roof and domes were gilded using the ion-plasma method.

Utility systems in the cathedral met all the requirements for modern buildings and facilities. The complex was equipped with an elevator, air conditioning and ventilation systems, telecommunications equipment, CCTV cameras, and a fire alarm system. Leonid Monosov left his post at Mospromstroy in 1999, when the restoration of the cathedral was nearly done (the church was opened to parishioners on December 31).

Over almost twenty years of work in one of the largest urban planning companies in the country, the executive has accumulated vast experience in working with the most challenging projects. At the time of his departure, he only had two organizations listed in his employment record book — MIIT and Mospromstroy. When journalists asked him about his career, Leonid Monosov simply answered, “It is what it is.” In 1999, he made another step forward, taking over as the CEO of Moskapstroy.

In Charge of Technical Representative Service

Moskapstroy was not a building contractor as such. In fact, the company only organized end-to-end construction processes — from selecting a site to transferring the facility to the investor’s assets. As a technical representative, its responsibility was to develop and approve design plans, obtain necessary clearances, monitor performance, and remedy any possible defects.

Every year, the company absorbed up to 150 billion rubles in investment and tackled even the most complex tasks — even the ones that seemed too challenging to their competitors. Despite such a large cash flow, Moskapstroy’s profit was no more than 1.5% of capital investments. Nevertheless, thanks to the competent management, the company showed an increase in profits every year.

In an interview with Vedomosti in 2006, Leonid Monosov noted that he had never liked the idea of loans and resorted to borrowed funds only once — when his investors had problems with financing. The executive often emphasized that he would not engage in real estate development directly, as Moskapstroy did not have the necessary resources to start its own projects.

“We are not a construction company and cannot compete with strong market players. Not everything is measured by money,” said the CEO.

But as a technical representative, Moskapstroy was head and shoulders ahead of other companies in the market. The company had no equal when it came to executing difficult projects that required complex engineering solutions. One of such challenges was to restore the Manege after a fire damage; the task was to rebuild both the above-ground part with complex wooden structures and the underground exhibition spaces in just 12 months. The company did a stellar job on the task and finished the works within the time frames specified in the contract.

Another important project was the Third Ring Road where the company acted as a technical representative for the construction of junctions, overpasses, interchanges, and tunnels. Aside from the landmarks and infrastructure in the capital, Moskapstroy was also involved in the construction of real estate in residential neighborhoods, including Mitino, Novokosino, Yuzhnoye and Severnoye Butovo, Brateevo and others. By 2011, the company’s main revenue was from its engineering services, and part of the income came from property management.

Further Career

In 2011, Leonid Monosov joined AFK Sistema, one of the largest investment corporations in the country. The conglomerate offered him a seat on the board and the position of executive vice president. During this period, the corporation actively promoted its real estate development ventures and planned to dive deep into infrastructure projects, for which it acquired a dozen land plots within Old Moscow. In 2020, one of the plots became the territory of the Nebo complex, a group of business-class residential skyscrapers.

Leonid Monosov managed AFK Sistema’s investment portfolio until December 2021. At that time, the conglomerate was going through hard times and had to abandon large-scale development projects in favor of suburban housing construction. The executive left his post at the corporation to return to engineering-related activities as deputy president at Moskapstroy-TN JSC.

The company entered the market in 2011 and today has a solid portfolio of commercial and non-residential real estate. Among other property, it owns the land under the Krasny Mayak warehouse complex. At the end of 2023, there has been news that Moskapstroy-TN plans to build a residential complex with ​​apartments of up to 120 square meters on this land plot. The project is currently under consideration.

Family

Leonid Monosov never discusses his personal life with journalists. What is known to the general public is that he has an adult son and daughter — Andrey Monosov and Alina Monosova — and two grandchildren. The manager allocates a lot of funds to charity, but prefers not to share details on his philanthropy. The businessman’s favorite sport is tennis.

Children

Leonid’s son, Andrey Monosov, was born in 1981 in Moscow and followed in his father’s footsteps. In 2003, he graduated from the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering and built a career in a large construction company, moving up from foreman to senior manager. Currently, he works with investment projects.

Alina Monosova is 11 years younger than her brother. Born and raised in Moscow’s Sokolniki district, she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at MGIMO. In the final years of her studies, she attended the evening degree program while working on Channel One. Upon graduation, she went to London to study marketing at Regent’s University. After completing her studies, she worked in the marketing department of Moskapstroy-TN JSC for ten years; today, she works in a large corporation in a field related to her major at MGIMO — public administration. One of her biggest passions is psychology.