SAUDI Arabia is witnessing an upsurge in economy, which is all set to stay for many years to come. Billions of dollars have already been allocated for mega projects, such as airport expansions, railroad networks, new universities, health care facilities and many other infrastructure projects. But many of these projects are still being supervised and by engineers from outside the Kingdom. Many of the engineering firms which win design and supervision contracts are either foreign companies or Saudi companies that have a monopoly over mega projects.
I was invited to attend a Saudi engineers’ forum in Riyadh on May 5 that was sponsored by Saud Consulting Services. The invitation was sent to me by chairman of the Saudi Council of Engineers Hamad Al-Shagawi. The forum got a boost from the presence of Saudi Minister of Municipal and Rural Affairs Prince Mansour bin Miteb. Prince Miteb was very candid in his speech about the difficulties and challenges facing Saudi engineers and Saudi consulting firms in the Kingdom. Many government and private firms in the Kingdom took part in the forum and exchanged views. It emerged from the discussions that there is a need to extend the role of the Saudi Council of Engineers.
The council is an independent professional body that was founded 10 years ago. It handles its financial obligations, but it works under the supervision of the Ministry of Commerce. Its main goal is to promote the engineering profession and raise its standards.
Even before I got the invitation to attend the forum, I was planning to write an article about reasons behind delays in completion of many of projects in Saudi Arabia. I decided to wait until after the forum. Because I am not an engineer, I told the organizing committee that I want as much historical data about the Saudi engineers and the obstacles facing them and how to overcome these obstacles. The forum was about Saudization and the challenges facing Saudi engineers. The forum organizing committee gave me the honor to sit next to an engineer who happens to be one of the first Saudi engineers. He is the one who was instrumental in holding this forum. His name is Dr. Tariq Al-Sawaf. He also founded the first engineering consulting company in the Kingdom. When I spoke to him, I found out that he was the first Saudi engineer to graduate from the United States. He graduated in 1955 from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. And in later years he was awarded honorary doctorate from his old school.
During his many long years as an engineer, he became involved in many mega projects in Saudi Arabia, such as building seaports, constructing new water dams and most importantly, he trained many engineers. The conversation took another turn when I found out that this engineer’s father was one of the physicians of the founding father of modern-day Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz Al-Saud, and other royal family members. So at the end of our long conversation, I was given a lesson about engineering and historical events. But the core of our conversation was about where are the Saudi engineers in the mega projects?
During the forum, I was surprised to learn that the Saudi engineering graduates with high hopes face the harsh reality of being engineers. An engineer is not paid enough for his or her work, especially if he works in the government sector. And this is ironic because there is a severe shortage of engineers in government establishments. And when time passes and no engineer wants to work for the government sector, then the government will end up hiring engineers from outside the Kingdom.
Many Saudi engineers look for jobs in the private sector without getting the right preparations for the new work environment. Those engineers need to be given more education before being put to face the actual challenges of being engineers. We see this happening in Saudi Aramco and SABIC. But the bigger problem is that there are not enough Saudi graduates from engineering schools for the job market and graduates still don’t get the attention needed. And this has very negative effects on Saudi engineering companies, particularly at a time when they are trying to implement Saudization plans. There are not enough Saudi engineers and when we find them, we don’t pay them enough. Saudi engineers must be exposed to on-job training and supervision to help them learn more about requirements of being professional engineers.
Now, let us talk about the Saudi engineering companies and offices, especially the smaller ones. There are many projects which run into tens of billions of US dollars. Contracts for all these projects are always given to pre-selected big companies and in turn these companies sub-contact the projects to smaller companies after reducing the value of the contracted projects, compromising the quality of projects. Therefore, we see a project finishing with lower quality and an inflated price. The government agencies that award the mega projects must take into considerations Saudi engineers and Saudi engineering firms. And another important obstacle facing smaller companies is that they do not have big capital. Many companies can’t finish a project with money given to them as installments over several years, because this will cause delay in finishing projects and companies will not have available cash to pay the workers, which in turn adversely impact the projects. Workers should be paid on time. Also, it is very important to have the right project supervision to make sure it is finished on time with the best quality. When a project is not finished with quality, then it will cost more to maintain and will eventually have a shorter life span.
