Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, & United Arab Emirates Trip Report

- May 2013 -

Al Ghanim of Kuwait

Al Ghanim is one of the biggest conglomerate in Kuwait comparable to Saudi Bin Laden. They are one of the leading EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) and O & M (operations & maintenance) companies in Kuwait. They have power plants in Kuwait (O & M) and projects in KSA and Qatar. We signed an agreement with them to supply their manpower requirements. Low hanging fruit is the marina complex (can accommodate 300 boats + 1000 apartments complex + mall) that they are building in Jubail.

Yapi Merkezi Al Nariya Project

Access Road to the Site

This is the project where we are currently sending workers. Al Nariya is approximately 150km from Jubail and 245 km from Al Khobar. The job site is literally at the middle of the desert as to go to the job site, you need to go off road for approximately 5-7km. The project is the work station (this is the maintenance depot of all the trains) of the rail road that links the Maaden mine site with the aluminum refinery in Riyadh. Yapi is only involved in building the depot but not the railway network itself. The project is composed of 22 maintenance and office buildings of different sizes. The project is set to be completed within 5-7 months. However, we need not worry about the workers as they will be eventually transferred to another project of Yapi in the Kingdom which I discussed in the next item. The work site is adjacent to the work camp which is well appointed to my opinion and compared to what I have seen so far. Major challenge is the distance of the job site to the city. Most of the workers are just confined in the site.

Yapi Merkezi Al Haramain Train Station in Medina

Through the referral of Mr. Bedri, we gain access to this project. I visited them last May 20, my first time to visit Medina. I was not able to get pictures but here are some that I have gathered from the web. Yapi Merkezi, together with Saudi Binladen is responsible building the $400M Medinah Train Station only. The rest of the projects will be undertaken by other contractors. The Al Haramain Train project aims to connect the holy cities of Mecca and Medina through Jeddah to ease the travel of pilgrims. They did not engage us initially on this as they thought that non - muslims will not be allowed to work in Medina, but since the train station is located outside the Haram (Forbidden) Area, then they can do so. They are now approaching finishing stage and is willing to hire at least fifty (50) workers from the current visa that they have. They intend to hire masons, painters, carpenters, tile setters as they are approaching the finishing phase of the project. One particular concern that they have is that the concrete blocks that they are using are different from what we normally use here in the Philippines. These blocks do not have holes. From my inexperienced eyes, I thought that handling this kind of material should not be a problem at all.

TAV Medina Airport Extension

This is a BTO (build-to-operate) project of TAV in Medina. What is shown above is the phase 1 of the project which is currently almost half-done As the main contractor, most of the requirements of TAV is on PMT (project management team). Their JV partner, ACC is the one who is bringing - in most of the manpower. The existing agency of ACC has been suspended by POEA and the workers are just being reprocessed. We have a good chance of approaching ACC however, I am still gathering more info as I received plenty of negative comments from their existing workers. They are still waiting for their next set of visa.

TAV New Airport Project in Abu Dhabi

This is the project that I am most excited with. This is an airport that is bigger than the one in Dubai and what has been recently completed by TAV in Qatar. This is five years project that had just been started five months ago and is being undertaken by TAV with CCC (a palestinian company based in Greece) and Arabtec (a Dubai-based company). Expected to employ a total of 20,000 expat, a big chunk of which will be Filipinos. We are currently re-deploying ex-Qatar workers of TAV.

ABV Rock Medical City Project Riyadh

This is a multi-billion project that was won and has been awarded already to ABV Rock.

This is a 1668 - bed medical facility + accommodation for workers and other support structures.
Mobilization of workers is expected to happen after Ramadan while the right - of - way / access to the job site has been finalized by the project owner (Ministry of Interior). We are one of the three agencies of ABV Rock that will support this project.