Ian Laski, President & CEO, AECOM Arabia • Interview

AECOM believes that Vision 2030 is invigorating the infrastructure development sector in Saudi Arabia, and having completed its digital transformation in years previous, the firm was well prepared for the impact of COVID-19.

How have you had to adapt in your internal operations and services during the pandemic?

In the particular context of Saudi Arabia, AECOM Arabia is extremely fortunate for a number of reasons. First, our offices are based in Saudi Arabia, which, driven by Vision 2030, gives companies such as ours a tremendous platform to be able to deliver value. We are an infrastructure-focused company, and infrastructure that is being expanded in Saudi Arabia to support social and economic transformation. Before the pandemic, AECOM embarked on a course of digital transformation. For companies like ours, which operate in multiple locations around the world that are often expensive, minimizing the real estate cost is something we are extremely interested in. Therefore, even before the pandemic we were looking at ways to commute digitally and link our various operations in the digital space. This allows us to optimize our real estate footprint and offer better value to the clients and the shareholders. We also perfect the protocols and procedures to help the company along the line of operating in a digitally interconnected world. That served us well in March 2020 in Saudi Arabia, as we were able to seamlessly move from our offices into the home working environment without any productivity loss. We had support from the corporate infrastructure and various groups around the world, who came together effectively and from people here on the ground. We moved to virtual meetings and interactions and have implemented a broad range of additional services. We are also aware that people are in isolation and often cut off from their social support and family network. We have therefore established digital forums, groups and remote teambuilding events to support our employees. We made tweaks as we went along but there was no major disruption. We also rolled out various tools that enabled clients to have a fully auditable trail of the effort the company is undertaking.

Can you tell us about what you are responsible for at NEOM?

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is one of our major clients in the Kingdom. The PIF projects encompass various types of projects, some of which are giga projects. Others may not be as great in terms of their contract value but are equally important for the Kingdom. I am proud and pleased that AECOM is present in many of those, and amongst those NEOM is extremely prominent. If you are the lead consultant in the Kingdom, as we like to think of ourselves, then you need to be present in one of the most important projects, which NEOM clearly is. We are the project management contractor for the development of the NEOM coastal city. We are also the engineer of record and the prime designer of the infrastructure for The Line City. These projects are proceeding at full speed and are groundbreaking in terms of how we think about future cities, how these cities are conceived through the design phase, and how they will offer livability in the future. The values that underpin these developments align very well with what we believe in at AECOM. Sustainability, livability, responsible development, and future proofing are the cornerstones of Vision 2030. The Project Management activities are executed entirely by the in-Kingdom AECOM teams. The engineering work is coordinated by a core team based on the NEOM site, but the detailed engineering is carried out at the centers of excellence of AECOM in London, Madrid, Hong Kong, the UAE, and Australia. The Line City design requires world-class expertise in hard rock tunneling, which AECOM excels at. Our execution model, which combines strong on-site presence and remote detailed design expertise highlights the benefits of a global and digitally connected delivery model by multiple expert teams.

Is the Red Sea Airport project part of the larger NEOM and The Line package?

It is part of the PIF but not part of the NEOM project. The gigacities where AECOM is involved include NEOM, Red Sea, and Amaala. We are also the project managers on the iconic Al Ula historical site development. We are fortunate that we are able to bring expertise to so many projects and share the lessons learned as the work progresses. The clients expect best practices, consistency, and continuous improvement, so being able to be present on multiple projects gives us the opportunity to share not just the company infrastructure as in processes, procedures, and systems, but also the lessons learned by us and the whole contracting community.