DAI has built a diverse body of work comparable in scope and impact with any development firm in the world. But we are far from complacent. Despite our global scale, our record of success, and our deep-rooted client and partner relationships, DAI remains today what it was as a fledgling company in the 1970s: innovative, alert, self-critical, and forward-looking—consistently driven by a powerful sense of corporate purpose.

DAI’s mission is to make a lasting difference in the world by helping developing nations become more prosperous, fairer and more just, cleaner, safer, healthier, more stable, more efficient, and better governed.

In pursuing this mission, DAI's employee owners hold true to six core values:

• People: We hire and strive to retain the very best people, and create a productive and motivating work environment for them. We want DAI to be a great place to work for a great group of people.
• Accountability: When we don’t get it right or don’t meet our high standards, we do not seek to assign blame: we fix it and get it right the next time.
• Quality: We demand of ourselves the highest attainable standards of quality and professionalism.
• Integrity: We have an unwavering commitment to civility, ethics, and integrity.
• Profitability: We must be a successful company to succeed in our mission. There is no conflict between financial success (profit) and mission success (development). Quite the opposite. If we succeed as a business, we will have a deeper development impact, secure the future for our employees and employee owners, and have the resources to invest in our future.
• Independence: an essential element of our DNA. Employee ownership is a leading edge of our competitive advantage. We take responsibility for our own direction and we have a personal stake in the success of our projects and our company.

In all our work, we try to nurture and combine four basic strengths:

• In-depth understanding of development drivers and constraints.
• Creative yet practical innovation delivered in a timely, flexible, and responsive manner.
• Project management teams that combine the best available international and local talent.
• A focus on results that meet, and usually exceed, the high expectations of our clients.

Backed by comprehensive, sure-footed project management systems and on-the-ground presence worldwide, our technical specialists reach freely across DAI's sectors to deploy these basic strengths and bring all of DAI's resources to bear on solving problems for our clients and achieving our mission.