Meed | Red Sea Global aims for $8bn of contract awards in 2023

Red Sea Global aims for $8bn of contract awards in 2023

14 March 2023

Saudi gigaproject developer Red Sea Global (RSG) is confident it will achieve its plans to award SR30bn ($8bn) of contracts across its Red Sea Project and Amaala developments this year.

Ben Edwards, group head of cost, commercial and procurement at Red Sea Global, said: “There has been SR27bn awarded so far on the Red Sea Project and just under SR13bn on Amaala. For 2023, there is a plan to do SR30bn of procurement. We have placed SR5bn so far this year and are well placed to achieve the SR25bn remaining for 2023.”

RSG has adopted a construction management approach to deliver its projects. Projects are broken down into individual trade works packages, which are procured by RSG, rather than awarding projects to a series of main contractors. There are typically about 20 works packages for each project.

Both projects are located on the west coast of Saudi Arabia. The Red Sea Project is predominantly an island development, while Amaala is primarily a coastal development.

The Red Sea Project covers an area of approximately 20,000 square kilometres and includes 22 islands and six inland locations. The project will be developed in phases, with phase one expected to complete in 2024.

Phase one includes the delivery of 16 hotels and the international airport. This includes mirrored orbs that will form the hotel on Sheybarah Island. The overall completion of the masterplan is scheduled for 2030. Once complete, it will have 50 hotels with 8,000 keys.

Amaala covers an area of approximately 2,500 sq km and will be developed in phases, with phase one expected to complete in 2027. The development will include 27 hotels with 37,000 keys.

RSG has a long-term pipeline of construction work on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast and beyond. It has confirmed that in addition to The Red Sea Project and Amaala, it is working on more than a dozen projects in the kingdom and plans to develop projects overseas.

The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is RSG’s shareholder, and the decision to entrust the developer with the delivery of more projects reflects its progress on existing schemes.