He was speaking at the Road Planning Design and Construction Saudi Arabia Summit, which ended on Tuesday at the Crowne Plaza Hotel.
The two-day summit highlighted the key solutions to the latest challenges in Saudi Arabia’s road construction industry.
It featured technical presentations from key experts, demonstrating best practices in the mechanical, electrical and plumbing sector.
The Ministry of Transport has allocated SR11.3 billion in the current budget for 389 new road projects with a total length of 6,600 km in various parts of the country.
The ministry has also allocated SR750 million for road maintenance and SR50 million for conducting studies on 2,762 km of new roads.
The Kingdom has a huge road network connecting its major cities and neighboring countries.
It also has a large municipal and urban road network.
Due to its harsh climate as well as the absence of maintenance management systems, the roads in the Kingdom require major reconstruction and redesign, which in turn increases the cost of operations.
Richon, who dealt at length with lighting solutions, highlighted the benefits of LED (light-emitting diode) systems for roads and tunnels.
Architectural lighting and consumer lighting account for nearly a quarter of the power use across the Kingdom, in line with the Middle East consumption trends, and LED holds the potential for lighting revolution.
“Lighting can be effectively integrated in infrastructure development for promoting sustainable energy use in the long run,” he told Arab News in an interview, adding that GE has invested about SR1 billion in localization and manufacturing projects across the Kingdom.
“We at GE have a robust plan to employ 1,600 Saudis by 2013. Architectural lighting and consumer lighting account for nearly quarter of the power use in the Kingdom, in line with the Middle East consumption trends.
“Speaking for GE,” he added, “Our lighting can enhance efficiency of power usage across the board by drawing on its LED technologies.”
The benefits of using LEDs include up to 90 percent energy-cost savings, a long useful life of up to 50,000 hours, minimized maintenance and related costs, excellent low temperature performance, and no mercury or lead and extremely low UV (ultra violet) and IR (infra red).
GE, whose commitment is built over 80 years to the Kingdom’s ambitious development plans helping deliver 50 percent of power and 180 million liters of clean water daily across the Kingdom, is now eyeing prospects with a number of municipalities for their projects.
“LED solutions are receiving global recognition for their energy-saving capabilities, long service life and the ability to reduce carbon emissions across a host of different sectors,” he said, adding that GE Lighting LEDs come from a lighting heritage that is unsurpassed.
The summit, organized by International Quality & Productivity Center (IQPC), had the participation of speakers from reputable companies including Saudi Bin Ladin Group, Atkins, Volkmann + Rossbach, Buro Happold, Hyder Consulting and Zuhair Fayez Partnership Consultants.
The discussion focused on a number of aspects of road planning, design and construction.
There were presentations on designing and building major road infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia, upgrading of existing level of infrastructural road safety by applying state-of-the-art safety barriers, implementing state-of-the-art road and highway modeling to enhance the quality of roads, constructing durable pavements with indigenous materials using modified binder, and lighting roads and tunnels with LED solutions for interiors and outdoors.
