AL HAMRA KUWAIT ON CREATING A NEW TRAJECTORY FOR ITS BUSINESS
CEO of Engineering and Procurement at Al Ham ra Kuwait, Mohammed Al Ghanim shares with Saadiya Ahmad how a global climate framework will help reduce carbon emissions and global warming
At the recent COP26 Summit, water and climate leaders concluded that the world’s water supplies required protection.
Mohammed Al Ghanim, CEO of Engineering and Procurement at Al Hamra Kuwait, believes the climate framework that’s required around the world to reduce carbon emissions and to reduce the increase in global warming is exceptionally important.
“What we do is more of a study on hydropower and we are seeing there is a surge in that, particularly in Asia and other parts of the world,” he explains, citing renewables as exceptionally important.
Secondly, as it relates to what EPC firms can be doing, he points out that EPC firms or the construction industry can either be viewed as a standalone construction provider or a holistic participant in providing adequate solutions to social and infrastructure problems.
He elaborates: “If you take the latter approach, you are therefore having a dialogue as to how to solve these issues by providing the higher engineering standards that enable you to create the technology set up to mitigate solutions to these pressing problems.”
Cross-country infra development
With regards to infrastructure and renewables, Al Ghanim suggests a refined framework which includes involving the private sector in public expenditures and public projects.
He explains: “In fact, at the recent G7 Summit held in 2021 in the UK, American President Joe Biden announced the ‘Build Back Better World’ initiative which highlighted a certain level of criteria and a requirement in order to have the benchmarking identify which infrastructure projects are of priority, how to ensure that there’s a cohesive effort to garner the required funding to spend it for societal problems.”
“This is why the OECD, at the request of the US, Japan, France, and Australia launched ‘The Blue Dot Network’ which I am a member of, and who are currently working to identify what benchmarks are required to create a sustainable infrastructure platform to funnel the funding that brings together governments, the private sector, and civil society to encourage adoption of trusted standards for quality, global infrastructure development in an inclusive framework,” Al Ghanim added, noting the importance of such framework.
Putting governance at the core
The benchmark of these government standards is known as the Environmental Sustainable Government Standards (ESG Standards) which is helping ensure governance models are not only being implemented, but have a responsibility towards their shareholders to ensure those they’re providing lending to are meeting these standards.
“As a result, this is creating a new trajectory with how business is being perceived,” he says.
“For companies like ours, we’ve already made the commitment to our lenders and to our clients that we will be implementing ESG Standards within the next two years fully, both in our projects and in our corporate government structures and ensure we have the required compliance to audit that this is currently in place.”
Becoming a global EPC firm
With a goal to become a global EPC firm by 2030, Al Ghanim indicates that the post-pandemic scenario implied resilience as a survival mode to overcome this challenge.
“On the other hand, Al Hamra Kuwait took a different approach and felt that COVID-19 was an opportune juncture to transform into something bigger and better,” he says.
According to him, transformation for Al Hamra Kuwait was the by-product of COVID-19, not necessarily resilience.
He adds: “We have been working on an opportunistic basis so we have seen projects, for example, in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Iraq where we felt we have the competencies that enable us to effectively deploy our resources to deliver these projects.”
A market-focused strategy
Furthermore, rather than going after a project, Al Hamra prefers to go after the market. “We are looking at markets like Egypt and Oman that are showing promise; and then of course, we have our government standards, the minimum thresholds that need to be manifested such that we make a decision to go for these projects and enter these markets is one of the things we are looking at,” he explains, citing governance and procedures as intrinsic to ensuring they achieve this goal within the next couple of years.
He adds: “Also, there are two other issues we are scrupulously identifying at this point; one is how to effectively deploy up-to- date technologies, either through acquisitions or through partnerships.
“The second is by becoming a onestop- shop where we can bring in lenders, our technology providers or larger EPC firms with whom we have a good working relationship to move into these projects and markets together.”
He concludes: “Also, from a postCOVID and transformation perspective, I think EPC firms in general, are now beginning to reassess their risk appetite. They can now mitigate this risk as they pursue future businesses; and these are the basic tenets of how we hope to achieve our global growth over the next few years.”