Jacob Mumm
men his role as a project management consultant for the 2030 World Expo hosted iin Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Bechtel is now overseeing the construction of key infrastructure for the planned six-month event, which is held every five years. It is expected to attract around 40 million visitors. Reuters reported that the country has allocated $7.8 billion to develop the event, which will also showcase the progression of its ambitious Vision 2030 economic development plan. Bechtel has worked in Saudi Arabia for more than eight decades, says Darren Mort, president of its infrastructure business. The company’s Managing Director of Public Infrastructure, Jacob Mumm, shares with ENR the details of his experience on hundreds of projects in a conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.
ENR: What were the projects that have defined Bechtel’s role in Saudi Arabia over the years?
Mom: A large part of our company’s history in Saudi Arabia is tied to the country’s development, with Bechtel involved in everything from one of the first oil refineries at Ras Tanura in 1943 to some of the first airports, power stations and energy projects. About the Jubail Industrial Developers Program we started in the 1970s, We have worked on more than 300 projects.
In the Riyadh metro rail project, Bechtel is a consortium partner for design, construction and integration, and also acts as the EPC contractor for two of its most challenging lines. We are working at Neom as a project management consultant and at King Salman International Airport, Bechtel is the terminal delivery partner. So this has really been a journey of many decades. I would say that the World Expo, if you talk about it as a sector, is an event but it is also urban development. We think we had that experience at Neom, and we have that experience at Expo. We also understand a lot about Riad and moving around on the ground.
WWhat lessons learned from the Riyadh Metro will the company gain in managing the development of the Expo infrastructure?
I was a project manager in the Riyadh metro, where we had over 100 jobs, 38 stations and two lines, just an amazing project. We did it as a [engineering, procurement, and construction] fixed price project with Siemens Mobility and regional contractors Almabani and Consolidated Contractors Co.
In this process, we really got to know all the stakeholders in Riyadh, such as utilities, and I think we built trust with many municipal authorities. This really set us up for the Expo work because it’s a 6km site north of Riyadh, south of the airport. We are doing all the infrastructure work there – all the utilities and roads. We work as a project manager for the Expo development company, which is an entity of public investment funds.
There is also a long-term plan for the exhibition site, which has a long-term benefit for the community.
As Bechtel’s projects in Saudi Arabia have evolved in complexity, how have local contractors working on projects like the Riyadh Metro evolved as well?
I really got to see over time these companies grow and develop, and that’s a legacy. Security is a great example. If you are going to residential or commercial construction sites, PPE standards and site control [were not] what you would expect and not really at the same level as the US. Because a lot of that labor and those contractors were involved in the Riyadh metro—along with other large companies—we had very high safety standards. This kind of rising tide lifted all boats in Riyadh.
We know many of the contractors who will be working at the Expo. It’s not all decided yet, but we know many of the owners of these companies and theirs [jobsite managers.] We lived there with them for the last decade.
From a cultural point of view, having spent many years living in Saudi Arabia, how would you say the support for projects like the Riyadh Metro and the World Expo differs there from the US?
It’s a nuance. Of course they complete the design and you have to go through the design stages before you get to construction, and the drawings have to be approved. There is a civil protection authority that validates that everything is done, a quality program and professional engineering—all these things we are used to. But I think that the political support for the projects, once the decision is made to do this project, is 100%. There is a royal decree, the project receives funding, land is allocated and work continues. Of course, there are annual budgets and funding cycles and all that stuff just like the rest of the world. But it seems that commitment to projects can sometimes be more. When it happens, it’s more consistent.
Regarding the Expo, as a mega project, do you manage the risks of limited resources in the region competing with other projects?
There is definitely competition for resources. I think Saudi Arabia is definitely one of the busiest live construction and active markets in the world. So how do you handle it because there is limited capacity in the hiring community? I think the answer is that you really have to spend a lot of time engaging the contracting community early on and engaging the supply chain, to test where there is capacity and when you need to increase capacity. This potentially means bringing regional contractors from other countries into the Gulf Cooperation Council or taking lower level contractors and finding a responsible way to help them get up the curve through training, support and mentoring.
That’s another thing, and then critically making sure the contract structures are risk-reward balanced. There may be a lot of work going on, given the particular circumstances a contract structure, a fixed price contract structure may not be appropriate. I think you just have to see where the capacity is, and the only way to do that is by talking to the hiring community.
What kind of conversations are you having with the contracting community about Expo preparations?
The Expo is really a great thing. It’s Expo 2030. There’s Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, and it’s all leading up to the centenary, the centenary of the founding of the modern Saudi state. Everything is very carefully choreographed, Vision 2030 is really about preparing the country, the economy and the people for the future and for a post-carbon economy. Innovation is truly at the forefront. how we do it [build] the Expo in a different and better way than other projects have done before? This is the idea of the project.
