Saudi’s Transformation: Engineering the way to Vision 2030

In recent years, the Saudi government has undertaken a number of reforms aimed at modernizing the Saudi economy and improving the country’s social welfare. These reforms have included increasing access to education and healthcare, promoting women’s rights, and diversifying the economy away from oil.

Saudi engineers are at the forefront of this massive economic and social transformation. From developing new infrastructure to designing innovative and future-ready assets, they are helping to shape the future of the Kingdom.

In this episode of the WSP Anticipate Podcast, Tariq Shehabaddin, is joined by Walid Mahmoud, Country Director – KSA at WSP in the Middle East, to envision the future of Saudi and reflect on the role of Saudi engineers in the current transformation. The talk also unveils an array of fresh perspectives across various disciplines as Tariq Shehabaddin speaks to Ishraq Raml, Assistant Engineer, Omar Al Somali, Consultant - ESG Advisory, Mostafa Mandourah, Senior Engineer - Infrastructure Supervision, and Ammar Al Harbi, Graduate Engineer – Digital, about the value they add to their respective disciplines and their anticipation of the developments to happen in the engineering industry as a result of the current Saudi transformation.

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Transcript

0:00  

Tariq - In recent years, the Saudi government has undertaken a number of reforms aimed at modernizing the Saudi economy and improving the country's social welfare. These reforms have included increasing access to education and health care, promoting women's rights and diversifying the economy away from oil. Saudi engineers are at the forefront of this massive economic and social transformation, from developing new infrastructure to designing innovative and future ready assets that are helping to shape the future of the kingdom. My name is Tariq Shehabeddin and in this episode of the anticipate podcast, I am delighted to be joined by Walid Mahmoud, our Country Director for Saudi. In today's episode, we will try to envision the future of Saudi and the role of Saudi engineers in the current transformation that is taking place in the kingdom. I will also meet with some of our WSP Saudi engineers and experts who are working in different sectors, including infrastructure, water, sustainability, and digitalization. This talk will uncover what this transformation means for them, their career, the engineering industry, and the kingdom. Walid, Thank you for joining our podcast. How do you envision Saudi by 2030? And what changes do you think will happen to the engineering sector because of the Saudi transformation?

Walid - Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about the Saudi vision 2030. I believe there are significant developments that will happen in Saudi Arabia by 2030. There are some steps taken already by the Saudi government and the Saudi leadership in this regard. And there is a plan and a strategy to achieve more by 2030. In this regard, I would like to touch base and talk about a few elements. I'll start with technology. There is considerable progress currently happening in Saudi Arabia in terms of technology, and there will be another considerable progress to be taken place in Smart Cities mega projects that are now underway. The next in the next few years, we will see cutting edge technologies being incorporated in these projects, there will be a lot of lessons to be obtained from this. And these lessons might change the way we are currently doing design and the way of our thinking and the way design will be taken further in this engineering industry in the next few years. I would like also to talk about the quality of life, the quality of life will be significantly improved in Saudi Arabia by 2030. There are already several steps taken in this regard. And there will be another steps to be taken by focusing on improving the existing assets to achieve progress by 2030. New Smart Cities will serve emerging technologies such as driverless cars drones, that will will form the way of life in new cities. I would like also to touch base on sustainability. I believe Saudi will also across some several steps closer to achieving its climate commitments. And in this particular area, I would like also to stress on the fact that thriving economy is one of the targets that Saudi Arabia is trying to achieve by 2030. The huge investment that Saudi is undertaken right now in infrastructure projects will start to give its return and will reflect in optimized economic performance in the next few years.

3:39

Tariq - As new cities are springing up across the country, there is a fear that existing cities will be left behind. I spoke to Ishraq Raml, our assistant engineer working as part of Judah's construction supervision program about existing cities as rock. Welcome to the Anticipate podcast. In your opinion, what are the implications of the current transformation for existing cities?

Ishraq - Thank you. Thanks for having me on the podcast. It's a pleasure. The revitalization of existing assets and cities throughout Saudi Arabia is a key component of vision 2030. This comes in the context of creating vibrant urban landscape that can accommodate a growing population and business opportunities. For example, the project I'm working in Jeddah, it's a program that aims at upgrading and developing infrastructure systems, including roads, bridges, tunnels, parks and walkways. The main objective of this program in particular, and regeneration projects in general is to deliver according to the needs of the residents and the environment.

4:35  

Tariq - This is great. And it takes us to the ESG aspect of the regeneration schemes through your personal experience. How does ESG contribute to the delivery strategy of these schemes,

Ishraq - Of course, ESG has a massive contribution and I have seen a keen interest in elevating the quality of life of residents. During working with our W SP colleagues on different projects. This is mainly the undertaking through building infrastructure networks that encourage residents to move and have an active lifestyle. Also, establishing a sense of citizens pride and ownership and celebrating their unique identities of our existing cities is also a major part of urban regeneration in Saudi, I have also seen through my work with WFP, a very keen interest in managing environmental impact of our construction projects. And this comes in line with the climate commitments made by Saudi.

5:28  

Tariq - So how do you envision the future of existing cities in Saudi? What will change in the next eight years up to 2030?

Ishraq - From my opinion, I think that Riyadh will present an example that other Saudi existing cities would like to follow in eight years, I believe that the transport infrastructure and systems and the capital will be highly integrated and multimodal, and the reliance on the private cars, for example, will be much less than it is now. And the green spaces as well, it will be at least double. So the everyday of Riyadh residents will be much different than it is now. I think the rest of Saudi existing cities will aim at copying this model to improve the overall quality of life of resident and to attract new business opportunities.

6:16  

Tariq - In both cop 26 and cop 27, Saudi emphasize its commitment to combating climate change. The new developments and mega projects, of course, have their own carbon footprint. In order to explore this further, I am pleased to have Omar Al Somali, our graduate Environment and Sustainability Consultant. Thank you for joining our podcast. Could you tell us about the actual measures you have seen through your work experience that are aimed at advancing the Saudi climate commitments into effective solutions. 

Omar – Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to really be on this podcast and to be working for WSP over the last year. First and foremost, one of the major changes I have realized is talking about 2019 2020. Around that timeframe. I have seen in Saudi Arabia, that environmental sustainability was not really considered to be a major footprint and a major importance and a priority in terms of views towards the public, towards companies, organizations, even governments or facilities as well. And that has increasingly changed over the last year, two years, and so on. I've seen a massive importance in this specifically aimed towards the net zero initiative, which is scheduled to take place by 2016. And the entire nation is expected to follow up on this and succeed at achieving this step together. One of the massive changes that I have seen has taken place in a couple of and honestly several power stations and the initiative and them taking the first steps to be compatible with the new laws and guidelines that are scheduled towards them by governmental entities in Saudi Arabia, such as the National Center of environmental compliance, the environmental laws that are in place within them and ministries in general. So it's honestly a great thing to see. And I'm really looking forward to seeing the entire nation keep up and achieve the netzero initiative by 2016 Sharla.

8:12  

Tariq - Several projects in Saudi are focused on creating new lungs for existing cities by expanding green areas. I asked Mustafa Mandurah, our Senior Engineer about the sustainability of this approach, especially with the limited water resource and the kingdom. Glad to have you here, Mustafa.

Mustafa - Thanks, Tarik. It is my pleasure to be on the podcast. I'm currently working with our CRC on our CRC project. Allah ZZ neighborhood and zone one neighborhood As a stakeholder manager, and in collaboration with our client, we have been implementing several solutions to ensure the sustainability of the green areas and Riyadh city just to go first of all with the wells and Saudi wells were commonly used as a source of irrigation water. However, this has changed now, Saudi is trying to preserve these wells, and maintain the current groundwater for future use. With this in mind, we have worked with our client to find alternative sources. We currently mainly use treated sewage effluent, or Tse, you can call it angry water for irrigation, just to preview about the THC water and we have used the THC water for irrigation analysis a year project for example. And we use the grey water to have also used grey water which is an even more sustainable approach in terms of energy consumption compared to the TASC way water is water that has been used for activities such as showering, washing dishes and laundry. So there is no pollution coming from this water. It does not include water from toilets or kitchen sinks. So we have been harvesting rainwater from the houses in in the vicinity of the project. And we're using it for irrigation of small areas within the project boundaries.

8:57  

Tariq - It is great to hear that in Saudi gray water is now in use. And it looks to me that there's some search for new ways to achieve water security. In this context, how do you personally anticipate the near future of Saudi in terms of achieving sustainability in the use of water resources?

Mustafa - Well, this is a great point. Water security is a hot topic in many countries across the globe. And there is a great deal of research being done in this area. So every day there are new technologies coming up. So of these technologies, for example, are directed to Russia analyzing the use of water and green areas. So in our region, some projects have already adopted deep routing, as a technique as we use it in one of the Middle East countries to reduce the plant's water consumption as WSP. We are considering bringing this technique to Saudi and as you know, there will always be developments in the water security domain. Our Future Ready mindset encourages us to always search for technologies and techniques that can enhance our client readiness for the future.

11:25  

Tariq - Digitalization in the engineering and construction industry is a major enabler of the transformation in Saudi I spoke with our model Herbie our digital engineer and asked him about the digital innovations that are part of the current projects in Saudi and how he sees this developing in the next few years. Happy to have you on the podcast.

Ammar - Thank you, Tarik for having me on this podcast. Saudi Arabia has ambitious plans to become a global leader in digital technology and innovation through its national and digital strategy 2030. The strategic aims to transform the country into a leading digital economy and society and to create an environment that is conducive to digital innovation and entrepreneurship. Based on our experience engaged on case a project, the digital projects requirements in Saudi are rising significantly. This includes using advanced digital solutions to plan and design projects more efficiently. We have seen more demand, for example, for pen related surfaces in Saudi, and there is a great potential for more demand on BIM as it enables faster responses to design changes or site problems, and it supports planning and Cost Management. In addition, the new mega projects that were launched in Saudi aiming to delivery delivering smart buildings and cities and integrated interconnect communities and development, and the overall ambitious to deliver modern and sophisticated assets led many of these projects to rely on digital innovation to a great extent.

12:53  

Tariq - So what is it that we're doing as WSP to meet the growing demand for digitalization and our markets?

Ammar - Thank you for this question. As WSP we have established the AI 3d team as part of PNP property and buildings where I 3d stands for Integrated digital design delivery. To elevate our offerings. Our ICT team helps guide our team and clients through the fast pace of the digital world to the best outcomes and results and provides them with the most innovative design solutions to be able to enable our clients on the digital front. We believe that we have to start from within therefore, we have been developing innovative solutions to help us a W SP to obtain a greater connectivity between data projects and communities. For example, We are now migrating from the obsolete unlimited file server solution to alive innovative and collaborative cloud based SharePoint which is very first stage has been recently deployed, and new stages are already planned and we will likely have a second stage this year. We are also working to launch a digital project management tool, business intelligence dashboards and ticketing for new digital projects. Again within the SharePoint environment, we will also soon launch the digital voice application, which is a low code application built completely from scratch about him to talk mobile application to spark innovative ideas and push for digital legislation within WSOP. I am also currently working and developing an application that aims at solving the real challenge of managing multiple active and upcoming projects simultaneously, avoiding clash delivery and enhancing resource planning, I can assure you that there will be an even more exciting things and initiate initiatives that our team will be undertaken as it grows and expense.

14:44  

Tariq - Now that I met with four different Saudi engineers working in different disciplines within our WSP team, I'm coming to think that one of the main outcomes of the current transformation taking place in Saudi will be the development of local engineering capabilities will lead building local capabilities requires creating opportunities for Saudi engineers to acquire expertise. What is it that W ESB does to have such an amazing pool of Saudi talents?

Walid - Thank you again, Tarik. Great question. Actually, I believe our graduate program in W SP has been a great success because It tolerates around the specific needs of those Saudi fresh graduates starting their engineering career. WS B is providing a great chance for those Saudi fresh graduates to be part of mega projects, learn more, develop the career in the engineering industry, and be ready to take the lead in the market in the next few years.

Tariq - Thank you so much, but it is great to see how WSP provides young Saudi talents with opportunities to learn from local, regional and global experts. 

Tariq - It has been a great pleasure for me to host this episode of the podcast, especially since it centers around my home country and amazing colleagues to our audience. Thank you for listening all the way through. Please leave us a comment of today's episode has sparked your interest. And don't forget to join us in two weeks for a new talk.