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A case study in procurement

18 March 2025

 

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While it may not be in the headlines as much as some of its more eye-catching official gigaproject counterparts, Roshn has already delivered thousands of residential units in Saudi Arabia as it seeks to fill the upscale and community living housing map.

Launched in 2020, the Roshn gigaproject is a component of the Vision 2030 plan to achieve 70% home ownership among Saudi nationals by 2030. Alongside the National Housing Company, it is the delivery vehicle for government-backed housing construction as Riyadh seeks to meet the shortfall in available stock.

Its first project was its Sedra community in the north of the capital. Currently on its fourth of eight delivery phases, the multibillion-dollar masterplanned development will comprise 30,000 homes over 20 million square metres (sq m) when completed.

Roshn’s second Riyadh community under construction is Warefa in the northeast of the capital. More compact than Sedra, it will have 2,300 units over an area of 1.4 square kilometres, with 150,000 sq m of green open space.

Three years after the launch of its first projects, Roshn announced Marafy, its first scheme in Jeddah and its largest mixed-use development to date. Designed to accommodate more than 130,000 residents, Marafy will be built around an 11-kilometre, 100-metre-wide canal, linking with Obhur Creek in the northern outskirts of the kingdom’s second city.

Already breaking ground, Marafy’s first core component is the Alarous residential community, which will offer 18,000 units over a 4 million sq m land area.

Elsewhere in the kingdom, Roshn’s other planned community projects include Almanar in Mecca, Alfulwa in Hofuf and Aldanah in Dhahran. Between them, these schemes total more than 50,000 units. It is expected that thousands of additional homes in other parts of the kingdom will be announced by the developer in the next two years.

Delivering such projects at many different locations is a complex exercise, requiring procurement strategies that not only encompass on-time and on-budget completion, but also ensure that local content is maximised while at the same time maintaining stringent quality standards.

Tasked with handling Roshn’s overall procurement strategy is Iain McBride, the gigaproject developer’s head of commercial.

It is expected that thousands of additional homes in other parts of the kingdom will be announced by the developer in the next two years

Like other gigaprojects in the kingdom, McBride and his procurement team have had to deal with the twin challenges of soaring cost inflation and maximising local content in materials and equipment.

The five official gigaprojects – Diriyah, Neom, the Red Sea Project, Qiddiya and Roshn – are free to employ their own procurement rules and processes, and each has taken a different approach to address its specific requirements. For example, Red Sea Global uses a construction management approach wherein it contracts directly with companies and suppliers that would normally work as subcontractors under the main contractors.

Similarly, Diriyah Company employs a strategy of bundling several smaller contract packages into a single large contract, as a means of consolidating work to ensure lower costs and maintain contractor interest.

Hear directly from the gigaproject owners at the biggest construction event – The Saudi Gigaprojects 2025 Summit, happening in Riyadh from 12-14 May 2025. Click here to know more

Demand signalling

The nature of Roshn’s mainly residential projects means that from the outset it knew it would need thousands of items with similar specifications, such as doors; glass panes; sanitaryware; and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems.

To secure this supply chain, early on the company identified local manufacturers of these products and reached long-term agreements with them for the delivery of required materials.

“Our first step was signing a lot of long-term partnership agreements through master purchase agreements where we could leverage preferential rates,” says McBride, speaking to MEED in late January.

“Ultimately, it's all about balance and risk – derisking the opportunities for the supply chain by telling them how many doors, for example, we're going to need each quarter for the next five to 10 years. It gives confidence to the manufacturers that they can start committing to.”

Roshn was the first of the gigaprojects to publicly signal its demand requirements. In 2021, it announced that it would require at least 5 million doors, 3.5 million air-conditioning units, 4.3 million windows, 80 million sq m of tiles and 6.5 million pieces of sanitaryware. These numbers have since changed, but they are indicative of the scale of the supply chain challenge.

Armed with the knowledge that Roshn is both supported by its parent, sovereign wealth vehicle the Public Investment Fund (PIF), and that it is a central element of Saudi Vision 2030, local manufacturers had the confidence to commit to investing in production capacity to meet its needs.

Significantly, most of these deals have been with manufacturers within the kingdom, thereby maximising the local content aspects. Just as importantly, Roshn has not had to make any fixed orders – so-called ‘take-or-pay agreements’ – with  suppliers, such is the latter’s faith in the developer.

“For the time being, we’ve not had to make any firm commitments,” says McBride. “We did look at it at one point, but our approach has always been to keep it as simple as possible by listening to the supply chain and seeing what they need. When we were speaking to them, it wasn’t their number one driver; they weren’t screaming at us saying, ‘We need you to give us a firm order’.

“Now, many people think a take-or-pay agreement is essential – where you commit to ordering [a certain quantity] of materials over a period of months or years and, if you don’t, you have to pay a penalty, thereby adding risk and complexity for the developer.

“What we were able to agree instead was that we'll be open and transparent with [the suppliers about] what we need. We said to ourselves, ‘Let's get a good price that works, whether we buy directly from the supplier or whether we include that supplier within our tenders with major contractors’. And we’ve seen great success with that approach, with multiple companies.”

The localisation push is supported by the design process. Wherever possible, the designs for Roshn’s projects incorporate and specify equipment and materials that are known to be manufactured locally.

There have been instances where specific, specialised materials and products are not produced in the kingdom, or not in the quantities required, such as marble and certain architectural facades.

Where this is the case, Roshn is keen to explore how it can help to build in-kingdom capacity. The developer has initiatives through which it looks to co-invest in production facilities that come with high capital requirements.

As McBride explains, Roshn is only one part of the huge and rapidly accelerating Saudi projects market ecosystem, and in helping to increase capacity, it is also putting itself in a position to help other developers with their supply chain needs.

A case in point is Roshn’s contract with China Harbour Engineering Company, which was awarded the $2bn deal in 2023 to build villas at Sedra and Warefa.  

Part of the contract requires the Chinese contractor to set up a precast manufacturing facility on site at Sedra. In this way, Roshn could not only ringfence the plant for its own needs, but when it no longer requires the output, other projects could benefit from its production capacity.

“The factory has a 15-year lifespan, so any additional capacity will be there for another 10 years after our requirements are met,” says McBride. “In Riyadh, we have Expo 2030, the new airport, the stadiums and many other projects that could draw on its output.”

There are some situations where even this is not enough, particularly when it comes to contracting expertise. One such case is Roshn’s mandate to develop a 45,000-seat stadium in the southwest of Riyadh as part of the kingdom’s Fifa World Cup 2034 plans. On such a complex, highly engineered project, Roshn has insisted that an international contractor teams up with a local company as a condition of tender participation.

This insistence is based on Roshn’s experience overseeing the construction of a football stadium in Dammam alongside co-developer, Saudi Aramco. The project, which is being built by a joint venture of Belgium’s Besix and the local Albawani, is proceeding at a rapid pace and progress has been relatively trouble-free.

McBride says: “If we have to go abroad, let’s go abroad. But make sure it’s done in a smart way and that we’re not just throwing money out of the kingdom.”

Early contractor involvement

On the issue of contracting, it is well known that the massive amount of work in Saudi Arabia is stretching contractors to the limit, pushing up prices and straining labour, engineering and equipment resources.

Roshn’s approach to this challenge has been to engage with contractors at the earliest possible stage of project planning, specifically at the design phase, through an early contractor involvement (ECI) procurement framework. In this way, the company is able to obtain contractor feedback during concept and design and subsequently lower construction risk by improving a project’s constructability.

“It's about signposting the demand by getting the contractor in early, where you can really influence the design, the buildability and the value-engineering opportunities,” says McBride. “Ideally, we bring them in as quickly as possible during the concept stages, when there's very little cost to changing things.

“The worst thing for a contractor is receiving a [request for proposal] cold. They have to … come back in four weeks and then be squeezed for a best price, whereas with ECI they can add value. They really appreciate that.”

When asked to quantify the cost benefits of such an approach, McBride is forthright: “It’s not even a case of doing the maths,” he says. “We have a great example of where it’s worked on our Aldanah project in Dammam. We selected the contract very early on and locked in the floor plans and facades that we wanted. We were then able to deliver a street of 10 show homes [that took] not much more than four months to design and construct.

“The saving, in terms of time, was massive; we probably halved the duration. I probably wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said it saved about a year.

“There are two ways you can follow your engineer,” he continues. “One: you can follow them early and make sure that the way you're looking to save costs is in areas that are not impacting the customer.

“Or two: the worst thing you can do is get to the end and you have a full structural design that could be over-engineered and you’re spending money in the wrong places.

“We don’t want to get to a point where we're trying to value-engineer by cutting things out that are important to customers,” McBride explains. “And that's what you avoid by having this early contractor involvement.”

The company is able to obtain contractor feedback during concept and design and subsequently lower construction risk by improving a project’s constructability

Unlike the other gigaprojects, Roshn has been in the favourable position of being able to raise some revenue by marketing and selling its properties off plan. While this has been beneficial from a development perspective, it has also meant that the developer must get its pricing and housing specifications right if it is to develop homes within an already-defined budget.

Having a contracting partner on board during the design and specification stage facilitates the conversation between the property sales team, which is informing on market requirements, and the builder, who can deliver within the designed cost and quality parameters.

This is in contrast to many real estate developments for which sales are completed before the construction estimates come in, potentially undermining the business case.

The step beyond ECI is for contractors and suppliers to partner with Roshn to inject equity into the projects by acting as co-developers. McBride points to several planned mid-rise towers at Marafy that could be a starting point for this.

Contractors financing projects or bringing in replacement equity has long been an ambition in the region, but builders have been reluctant to adopt this approach. Nonetheless, McBride is confident that it could happen, indicating that there has already been strong interest from the contracting community.

Cost inflation

Another major talking point in Saudi construction is the escalating costs caused by high inflation, logistical challenges and a tightening of contracting and skilled labour capacity.

In many cases, this has required the rescoping of projects, revisions to timelines and even the scrapping of elements. Neom is arguably the best example of this, as it has reprioritised The Line and is facing an estimated cost of $50bn for building each of its first three modules – far in excess of original estimates.

Roshn’s approach to the challenge is to be as open and transparent as possible with the contractor and supplier community. This has involved outlining a long-term pipeline of work that gives the supply chain confidence about its requirements, enabling them to fix in long-term pricing structures. In return, the developer expects prices to come in competitively.

“It’s no secret within the supply chain market that Roshn has quite aggressive price points,” says McBride, a former chartered surveyor who, prior to joining Roshn, worked as a quantity surveyor and cost-management director at consultants Faithful+Gould (now AtkinsRealis) and Rider Levett Bucknall.

“What we're trying to do is engage early, build trust with the contractors, let them see we’re a good client that's going to pay and have honest and fair contracting terms, and work together to try and solve issues post-contract.

“We don't mind if there's inflationary pressures because of commodity prices increasing. But what we're trying to avoid is inflationary prices through just the demand increasing.

“An innovative way that we've implemented this even on our lump-sum contracts – our traditional Redbook or older contracts – is that we have preferred supplier agreement clauses in them,” he adds.

“So, rather than a traditional bill of quantities (BoQ) that has a rate, a quantity, a total, within our rate section we have the material supply rate, the installation rate and then everything else, such as overhead profit. We protect the installation rate, so it's not a percentage of the material; it's a fixed SR100 a square metre to install, for example.

“One of the big frustrations for contractors is [that the supplier has] a material we think they're going to deliver. It's maybe not available, so they submit alternative materials. The client keeps rejecting it – it's not what they want – and it becomes a delay; it's painful.”

McBride gives the example of a pre-approved bathroom sink. Thanks to Roshn’s relationships with key long-term suppliers, the company is able to negotiate better rates for sanitaryware than would be available to a contractor on an ad hoc basis. If the developer’s rates for sinks are better than the BoQ, it splits the savings 50:50 with the contractor.

“The contractors are winning out of that exercise, we're winning out of it and, ultimately, the customers are winning out of it as well, because we’re passing on those savings,” says McBride.

Flexibility

The benefits to contractors and suppliers extend to payment terms. In today’s sellers’ market, vendors are effectively able to pick and choose the clients they want to work for. As a result, clients – including the gigaprojects – have had to introduce more flexible payment terms and develop market reputations for paying on time.

Roshn may lead the pack on this, with an average payment time from invoice to payment of just 13 days in 2024. A decade ago, this would have been unheard of, but it is now increasingly becoming the norm among the gigaprojects.

In addition, like its PIF peers, Roshn has done away with tender fees and tender bonds, viewing them as outdated means of enforcing vendor participation, especially given the tight liquidity and cashflow situation in the projects market in Saudi Arabia.

Will such flexibility ever extend to performance bonds? McBride is sceptical, pointing to the fact that Roshn’s strong relationship with local banks allows to it facilitate credit agreements between contractors and their lenders. Being a gigaproject developer supported by the PIF – and by tacit extension the state – also helps provide the underlining ease of mind for financers.

Nonetheless, Roshn also takes a proactive approach with advanced payments, enabling up to 20% of the total contract value at the initial stage of the project.

“We've been quite clever in how we do this,” says McBride. “We don't go and release 20% straight away. We’ll do 10% and then, when we’ve evidence that you’ve expended that 10% on mobilisation and site establishment, we’ll release the second 10% tranche.”

Subcontractors

One of the chief sticking points in the kingdom’s projects ecosystem in the past decade has been the capacity and capability of its subcontractors.

The payments crisis in 2017-20 forced many main and general contractors to reduce their permanent labour forces, plant and general resources. Wary of a repeat, most have retained their leaner structure and so have turned increasingly to subcontractors for their manpower and delivery requirements.

In theory, this makes sense, but in practice subcontractors in Saudi Arabia are themselves often overstretched in terms of both delivery capacity and labour availability. In turn, they frequently use their own subcontractors, which then also outsource, to the point that specific elements of a project may be completed by companies very far down the supply chain – with the quality issues that this implies.

Roshn’s solution is to ensure any subcontractor on site goes through a vetting process encompassing quality and financial checks, thereby ensuring it has full visibility on every company on site.

Increasingly, Roshn is dealing with suppliers directly, under supply-install contracts. This can create interfacing issues with the main contractors, however, which are ultimately responsible for the project’s delivery.

“We have to be quite careful on that,” McBride says. “We have to go through all the checks and balances during the prequalification process because if we are going to give a subcontractor to a contractor that we're saying is pre-vetted by Roshn, we could be opening the door to lots of claims from the main contractor against us. So, vetting for us is absolutely crucial.”

Roshn is also working with smaller suppliers and subcontractors to help them evolve and grow, so that they can start taking on smaller main contractor roles themselves.

“Not every construction package we award is in the billions of riyals,” says McBride. “Our thinking is to let the big tier-one contractors focus on the multibillion-riyal deals while we encourage the smaller ones to grow as part of our supplier development programme.”

To achieve this, the developer holds events and bootcamps with its vendors to discuss best practices on subjects including health and safety, variation procedures and how to submit good tender returns.

Roshn is also working with smaller suppliers and subcontractors to help them evolve and grow

Building information modelling

Vendor education also extends to the use of building information modelling (BIM) and other construction technologies.

BIM is mandatory on Roshn’s projects, as it is on the other gigaprojects. While use of the technology is standard across almost all main contractors in the region, its take-up among smaller companies in the supply chain has been slower, with firms pointing to the cost of its adoption and integration as a barrier, as well as the fact that some clients, particularly government ones, view it as providing limited benefit.

Roshn’s task in this area is made difficult because its projects are less complex from an engineering and construction perspective.

“We’re building villas; it’s completely different to building stadiums or airports,” McBride says. “Can these contractors build from [two-dimensional] drawings? Yes, of course they can. You're not going to convince a smaller contractor that all of these benefits will make it easier to build because they know how to build. They've been doing it for decades.

“But the savings are in making it easier to procure, savings in the repeatability, and in the change control. If you upskill yourself on a Roshn project, you are building your capability, which you can then [demonstrate] to other clients as proof you can go after bigger and more complex projects. It's something that the whole industry has to get behind.”

Indeed, there is much to learn from Roshn’s approach to delivering its infrastructure and building plans. While the comparatively straightforward nature of its projects means that its procurement strategies may not be suited to those gigaprojects with more iconic designs, for many other developers it is a case study in efficient processes that have proven effective in delivering work on time and to budget.

This is just as well given that Roshn is set to embark on the next stage of its journey, with its focus on the more complex Marafy city development in Jeddah and Roshn Stadium in Riyadh. However, the evidence suggests that from a procurement strategy perspective, it is well-positioned to also make this a success.

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Edward James

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    China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) takes the second spot with $3.625bn, while China Gezhouba Group Construction holds third with $1.670bn.

    In December last year, CCCC signed a $4bn agreement to develop the next phases of Kuwait’s Grand Mubarak Port on Boubyan Island. In March 2025, China Gezhouba won two contracts worth over $557m from the Public Authority for Housing Welfare for the South Saad Al-Abdullah residential project in Al-Jahra Governorate.

    While Chinese contractors are playing a growing role, local players continue to manage substantial orderbooks, including Al-Ahmadiah with $1.071bn of work under execution, Khalid Ali Kharafi & Sons with $1.017bn of work, and Mohamed Abdulmohsin Al-Kharafi & Sons with $992m.

    Oman

    The Omani construction sector has changed at the top as the value of projects that contractors have at the execution stage has declined. Al-Adrak Trading & Contracting Company has moved into first place with $1.423bn of work. The top-ranked contractor in 2025 had $2.4bn of projects at the execution stage.

    Al-Adrak was the eighth-ranked contractor in 2025, with $700m of projects at the execution stage.

    The local contractor’s recent success has been anchored by securing work on Oman’s new generation of real estate projects. In May 2025, it secured a contract with Saudi developer Dar Global to build the villas and apartments at the Aida project.

    Last year’s top-ranked contractor, Galfar Engineering & Contracting, is now in second place with $1.392bn. Galfar’s portfolio is headlined by the $1.5bn Hafeet Railway project connecting Oman and the UAE.

    Sarooj Construction Company follows closely in third with $1.372bn, while India’s Larsen & Toubro maintains a strong presence in fourth with $906m. Overall, the market shows further softening in 2026, with contractors across the rest of the ranking holding less work than in 2025, when the 10th-ranked contractor, PowerChina, had $500m of projects under construction. In 2026, it has $250m.

    Qatar

    Qatar’s market is transitioning into a post-World Cup phase, focusing on social infrastructure and utility projects. Midmac Contracting Company has moved to the top spot with $2.082bn, nearly doubling the value of projects held by the second-ranked UCC Holding, which has $1.05bn.

    Midmac’s return to the top 10 and the top of the ranking is largely due to it recently securing the $2bn Amiri flight facilities project at Hamad International airport, while UCC’s work remains centred on public-private partnership school schemes and road infrastructure for Ashghal.

    The contracting joint venture of Qatari Diar and Saudi Binladin Group, QD-SBG Construction, is in third position with $843m. Its largest ongoing project is Al-Rafidain Mall for Abraaj Al-Mustaqbal RealEstate.

    As the Qatari market transitions, four other contractors have moved into the top 10 in 2026. They are Badr Contracting & Trading with $534m of projects under execution, Al-Masaken Trading & Contracting Company with $400m, Marbu Contracting Company with $395m and Al-Mohannadi Group with $369m. As these contractors join the ranking, Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC), Shelter Contracting, InfraRoad Trading & Contracting Company, Changda Construction and American International Contractors Incorporated have moved out of the top 10.

    Saudi Arabia

    Much is changing in Saudi construction, but one constant is Nesma & Partners’ position at the top of the kingdom’s contractor ranking. While its position remains the same, the value of construction work that Nesma has under execution has decreased significantly when compared to 2025. This year, the contractor tops the Saudi ranking with nearly $9bn of work; last year it led with nearly $14bn of work.

    Nesma is not the only contractor that has experienced a reduction. Second-placed Almabani has $6.5bn of projects under construction this year compared with $8.5bn in 2025. Third-placed contractor Saudi Binladin Group has maintained a total of about $6.5bn over 2025 and 2026, and this has allowed the Jeddah-based contractor to jump up from seventh position last year. The company is working on several high-profile projects in the kingdom, including the world’s tallest tower in Jeddah, which will be over 1,000 metres tall.

    All the other contractors in the top 10 have similar declines in the value of their projects under execution. The exception is the local Building Contracting Company, which joins the top 10 in 10th position with $3.2bn of work. The 10th-ranked contractor in 2025 was China Harbour Engineering Corporation with $5.9bn of work, a total that in 2025 would have meant it would be the fourth-ranked contractor in 2026.

    The reduction in work volumes reflects the ongoing reprioritisation of projects in Saudi Arabia. Government officials have said that while some projects, such as The Line at Neom, have slowed down, other projects, such as those for Expo 2030 Riyadh and the Fifa World Cup in 2034, will be accelerated.

    UAE

    Contractors in the UAE are benefitting from high levels of spending across public infrastructure and real estate. Following on from 2025, Trojan General Contracting continues to lead the UAE ranking. In 2026, it has $7.59bn of projects under execution, up slightly from the $7.2bn recorded in 2025. The Abu Dhabi-based contractor has work on public infrastructure schemes for Abu Dhabi-based government agencies, and this base is supplemented by work on real estate projects across the UAE.

    China State Construction is in second position with $5.618bn under execution. The Beijing-based contractor has risen up the rankings from seventh position last year when it had $4bn of work under execution thanks to a series of deals for the construction of real estate and roads.

    In third position is London-headquartered Innovo with $5.443bn of work at the execution stage. Innovo is working on major real estate developments in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and has quickly grown in recent years to become one of the key players in the UAE’s construction sector.

    Sobha Constructions, the construction arm of property developer Sobha, is in fourth position with just over $5bn of work under execution. It is the main contractor for Sobha’s projects, which include the $763m Sobha Reserve and the $400m Skyvue Towers at Sobha Hartland 2.

    The local Dutco, with $4.43bn of work under execution, has joined the top 10 in fifth position. The contractor has picked up a wide range of work on Dubai real estate projects over the past two years. Three other contractors in the ranking, Ginco, Unec and Arabian Construction Company, also work extensively on real estate projects in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The local Alec is active in the real estate sector too. Additionally, it is working on a large data centre project in Abu Dhabi as well as the Wynn resort in Ras Al-Khaimah.

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    Colin Foreman
  • Contractors submit bids for Aramco-backed logistics hub

    30 March 2026

     

    Contractors submitted bids on 18 March for a contract to build a logistics complex at King Salman Energy Park (Spark).

    Asmo, the logistics joint venture of Saudi Aramco and DHL Supply Chain, tendered the estimated SR804m ($214m) contract on 7 December.

    The logistics hub will span more than 100,700 square metres at Spark.

    Al-Khobar-based engineering firm House of Consulting Office is the project consultant.

    Last month, Asmo signed an agreement with Bahrain‑headquartered Arcapita Group Holdings to deliver the project at King Salman Energy Park (Spark).

    Last month, Asmo signed an agreement with Bahrain-headquartered Arcapita Group Holdings to deliver the project.

    The project will feature a 43,000 sq m temperature-controlled Grade A warehouse; more than 3,000 sq m of offices and staff amenities; 5,300 sq m dedicated to chemical storage; and an open yard spanning about 1.2 million sq m.

    Planned for large-scale industrial use, the site is expected to incorporate advanced warehouse and building management systems, end-to-end digital connectivity, automation and robotics.

    It will also be developed in line with internationally recognised sustainability standards, featuring solar (photovoltaic) readiness, electric-vehicle charging infrastructure and a target of LEED Gold certification.

    The development is aimed at supporting the next stage of Saudi Arabia’s logistics and supply chain expansion.

    Under the deal structure, Arcapita will provide funding and retain ownership of the asset, while Asmo will develop the facility and then lease and operate it under a 22-year occupational lease.

    According to a statement, “the scheme will be executed via a forward-funding model, underscoring a long-term commitment to national infrastructure”.

    Asmo added that this will be its first purpose-built logistics centre and one of four strategic locations planned to anchor its nationwide logistics network, aligned with the National Transport and Logistics Strategy under Saudi Vision 2030.

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    Yasir Iqbal