Posted on July 31, 2024
Major civil engineering firms linked to work at the Neom giga-project in Saudi Arabia have remained silent in the face of Arcadis’ exit from the Middle East.
Arcadis CEO Alan Brookes revealed to NCE in an interview published 25 July that the firm had decided to wind down its Middle East operations due to issues with getting paid by clients and a lack of health and safety compliance.
Neom is one of the biggest areas of civil engineering work on the planet, but controversy around the project means civil engineering firms rarely discuss their work.
Civil engineering firms were silent in May 2024 when BBC reported that Saudi Arabia authorised use of lethal force against civilians standing in the way of its linear city The Line.
A former Saudi Arabian intelligence officer Col Rabih Alenezi told the BBC he was ordered to kill any indigenous people who refused to leave their homes to make way for the construction of the Line, which is the flagship project of the Neom gigaproject. The order was made on a village called al-Khuraybah, 4.5km south of The Line, which was mostly occupied by the Huwaitat tribe.
Arcadis had previously been linked with Neom as a project manager on its Red Sea project, according to MEED.
Asked by NCE if Arcadis is involved with Neom, Brookes said: “No, we’re not. We made a decision three or four years ago that we will finish all projects and be out of the Middle East in total by the end of this year.
“The main reason to make that decision was cash. You just don’t get paid, basically, is the honest answer.”
Brookes went on to say that another issue was that Middle Eastern clients sometimes did not ensure health and safety standards on projects.
“One of the conditions was that [clients] abided by our health and safety rules, and we found that too many clients would say ‘Yes’ but not follow through on that all the time,” he said.
“We have a set of rules about how you would undertake a project [including] proper health and safety planning, proper checks, that the contractors are briefed properly.”
Brookes also highlighted the work Arcadis has done to improve its ethical standards to improve employee retention.
Civils firm ignore request for comment
In addition to the controversy about the killing of local indigenous people by Saudi security forces in aid of developing Neom, rumours about financial issues have blighted the project managers.
Firms that are known to have been contracted to work on Neom projects in Saudi Arabia include Jacobs, Aecom, Bechtel, Keller, AtkinsRéalis, Webuild, Archirodon and Deme.
All were all approached by NCE for comment on the news from Arcadis. None of them responded.
Aecom and Bechtel were appointed to provide project management services for the first phase of The Line.
Keller signed a major piling contract worth around £51M on the project in 2022.
In February 2023, AtkinsRéalis and Jacobs were appointed as delivery partners on The Line.
In December 2023, an Archirodon and Deme consortium was awarded an estimated £795M ($1bn) contract for the second phase of work to expand The Oxagon port.
In January 2024, Webuild signed a contract worth $4.7bn (£3.7bn) to build an artificial lake at Trojena, one of the projects within the Saudi Arabian mega-project called Neom.
It is widely understood that companies involved with Neom have their employees sign non-disclosure agreements.
