Ahmed Ibrahim Al Bassam, CEO, El Seif Engineering Contracting • Interview
Since its establishment in 1975, El Seif Engineering Contracting has maintained its commitment to the highest standards of quality in delivery through its world-class people and processes.
How did the company respond to the pandemic?
At El Seif, our first priority was protecting our people and safeguarding business continuity. In the early days of the pandemic, we formed a crisis management committee to act as a nerve center to help the organization respond to the challenges posed by COVID-19 outbreak. We made tough but necessary decisions to ensure the safety of our people. We transitioned thousands of people to work remote overnight, cancelled all non-essential travel, and relied heavily on our sophisticated IT infrastructure to conduct a large portion of our business virtually. Our COVID-19 response plan ensured that mission critical functions continued to run smoothly. The early adoption of our restructuring initiatives even before the significant spread of COVID-19 put us well ahead of the curve from both financial and operational perspectives, preparing us to better control our costs and manage our cashflow. These are critical for a renewed, resilient business strategy focused on efficient and effective operations.
How has new technology influenced your business model, and what are your future ambitions around digitalization?
Over the past few years, we have made great strides in modernizing our back-office systems and structure to support growth and scale in the future as well as ensure productive virtual operations. El Seif’s recent achievement as the 1st company in Saudi Arabia to earn the international benchmark for excellence in digital engineering and project delivery (BSI Kitemark certification in BIM ISO 19650), represents a significant milestone in our digital strategy. With El Seif’s achievement, the Kingdom has become the 20th country to hold the BSI Kitemark for BIM globally, which gives us all a great sense of national pride. We are also especially proud that the majority of our BIM staff are young Saudi male and female engineers paving our digital future. Furthermore, we are implementing a digital transformation initiative in partnership with a world-class construction technology provider to build AI into our work processes. Our digital strategy will see us run our projects’ day-to-day operations more efficiently, optimize resource utilization, and realize improved margins associated with integrated delivery, connectivity and leveraging of new technologies. This is a necessary step to build our company for the long term to ensure our processes, tools, and structure keep pace in the rapidly changing digital age.
El Seif executed landmark megaprojects such as Kingdom Tower, Princess Noora University, and KAFD. What value proposition do you bring to such works?
The success of El Seif lies in our unshakeable commitment to the organization’s core values: Excellence, Innovation, Integrity. For all our customers, the certainty of safety, quality, cost and schedule that we deliver is critical. Our landmark projects have transformed the skylines of the region’s major urban centers earning El Seif the reputation for getting the job done ‘right’ no matter how complex, no matter how large. At El Seif, we believe in investing in our human capital. Our pipeline of local talent is expanding, and we intend to take Saudization to the next level and seed the Kingdom’s future construction leaders.
The last 12 months have been a challenge but have also featured opportunities. What are your expectations and ambitions for 2021?
Yes, amongst the significant challenges there were opportunities. The selfless commitment of our people meant we were able to collectively implement measures to prepare our company to cope with the crisis. In 3Q2020, El Seif was assigned a long term Acredit rating with a “stable” outlook from Tasnnief, Simah Rating Agency, for the second year in a row. That same year, we achieved our 2020 business plan within budget under difficult and testing COVID-19 conditions and adopted a proactive screening and selective bidding approach to target quality projects while building up strategic JV partnerships with international players resulting in major new awards. 2021 presents exciting opportunities for El Seif, as we adapt to a changing landscape of government spending toward Vision 2030 projects. We are defining our strategic direction over the next five years to create a more resilient company by evolving our operating model and go-to-market strategy, expanding our mix and range of services, and delivering on our digital innovation vision. Our customers and partners see us integral to their success. We will anticipate their needs and deliver on every commitment we make.
BIO
Ahmed Ibrahim Al Bassam is a visionary CEO who has worked in Europe, and across the GCC. His multi sector experience over the last 25-plus years include oil and gas, power generation, manufacturing, global logistics and procurement, and construction. Prior to his current role as CEO of El Seif, Al Bassam was group CEO at Al Rajhi Group for six years and EVP at the Industrial Group for six years, following 11 years at Schlumberger, where he held executive leadership roles.