Related Articles

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  Algiers moves on new railway project

  2 March 2026

  

   

  Algeria’s state railway company Agence Nationale d’Etudes et de Suivi de la Realisation des Investissements Ferroviaires (Anesrif) has formally started the procurement process for its multibillion-dollar Laghouat-Ghardaia-El-Meniaa railway project.

  International and local firms have been given until 8 March to submit expressions of interest for the overall client’s engineer role on the 495-kilometre-long railway development.

  Consultancies have also been given until 12 March for two separate contracts covering the project supervision and control of the first 265km-long element between Laghouat and Ghardaia, and the 230km-long line between Ghardaia and El-Meniaa.

  This Laghouat-Ghardaia section, which is estimated to cost about $1.4bn, will comprise 21 viaducts, one tunnel, 55 pipe crossings and five stations.

  The 230km-long Ghardaia to El-Meniaa second section will start at Metlili station and extend south to El-Meniaa. It will comprise six viaducts, 35 railway structures and three stations, and have an estimated total construction cost of about $1.2bn.

  The speed of passenger trains on the railway will be 220 kilometres an hour (km/h) and 100km/h for freight trains.

  The solicitations of interest for the construction of the two sections were originally scheduled for February, but to date have not been released.

  READ MORE: Algeria prepares 495km railway construction tender

  

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  Edward James
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  Saudi developer Acwa names new CEO

  2 March 2026

  Saudi Arabia’s Acwa has appointed Samir J Serhan as CEO, effective 1 March 2026.

  Serhan joined Acwa, formerly Acwa Power, last year as president for Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. He previously served as chief operating officer of US-based Air Products, where he had global responsibility for operational business and project execution across the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and India.

  Earlier in his career, he was president of hydrogen at Praxair and held senior leadership roles at Linde Group in the US and Germany, including managing director of Linde Engineering.

  Outgoing CEO Marco Arcelli will remain as an adviser to the chairman to ensure continuity.

  Arcelli said: “Over the past three years, Acwa’s portfolio has doubled in size, and we are on track to double it again by 2030, scaling both our footprint and our impact. Acwa now produces around 25% of the world’s desalinated seawater.”

  He added: “We have expanded into new markets, including Azerbaijan, China, Kuwait and Senegal, while advancing energy export opportunities from Saudi Arabia.”

  Acwa recently extended its lead at the top of the GCC Water Developer Ranking, adding 265,925 cubic metres a day (cm/d) in net capacity from new contract awards in 2025.

  The biggest of these involves a contract to develop the Ras Mohaisen independent water plant, awarded by the Saudi Arabian state offtaker Sharakat, formerly Saudi Water Partnership Company.

  The project is located on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast and will have the capacity to treat 300,000 cm/d of seawater using reverse osmosis technology.

  MEED reported last September that Acwa’s net power generation capacity in the GCC was 28.1GW, with the company holding more equity than the rest of the region’s top 10 private power developers combined.

  

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  Mark Dowdall
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  Amazon data centre hit highlights sector vulnerabilities

  2 March 2026

  

   

  Amid ongoing Iranian missile and drone attacks on GCC states, US cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) has reported service outages following separate incidents at two of its UAE data centres.

  “At around 4.30AM PST [16.30 UAE time on 1 March], one of our Availability Zones (mec1-az2) was impacted by objects that struck the data centre, creating sparks and fire,” AWS said in an operational update on 1 March.

  At 10.46 UAE time on 2 March, the company announced a further update, saying that another of its three UAE Availability Zones had gone down.

  “We can confirm that a localised power issue has affected another Availability Zone in the ME-CENTRAL-1 Region (mec1-az3),” it said in the latest update. “Customers are also experiencing increased EC2 APIs and instance launch errors for the remaining zone (mec1-az1). At this point, it is not possible to launch new instances in the region, although existing instances should not be affected in mec1-az1.

  “Other AWS services, such as DynamoDB and S3, are also experiencing significant error rates and latencies. We are actively working to restore power and connectivity, at which time we will begin to work to recover affected resources. As of this time, we expect recovery is multiple hours away.”

  Regional footprint

  The company, part of the US’ giant Amazon group, is one of the world’s largest data centre and cloud operators. It operates three data centres in the UAE – one in Dubai and two in Abu Dhabi – and provides critical IT services to government and private sector operations and systems.

  Its Availability Zones consist of infrastructure in separate geographic locations, spaced far enough apart to significantly reduce the risk of a single event affecting customers’ business continuity, yet near enough to provide low latency for high-availability applications that use multiple zones.

  The targeting of the two data centres – and potentially others if the conflict continues – highlights the strategic importance of these types of facilities. The AWS attacks are believed to be the first time a data centre has been targeted in a conflict and are likely to drive a reconfiguration of future campus designs to account for similar risks.

  Such changes could include increased redundancies – particularly in power provision – enhanced structural resilience, and potentially a reconsideration of the location and clustering of data centre facilities.

  WATCH: Ed James explores the rapidly evolving GCC data centres market

  Historically, data centres in the region were largely smaller enterprise facilities dedicated to storage services for organisations such as banks. Their locations were often confidential and in areas that were difficult to target, making them harder to disrupt.

  However, the emergence of large in-region hyperscale data centres – with IT loads of 200MW or more and larger physical footprints – may necessitate a rethink of how such infrastructure is delivered, not just in the GCC but worldwide.

  According to MEED Projects data, there are believed to be about 185 data centres in the region, each with an estimated capex investment value of more than $10m, of which about 99 are either planned or under construction.

  

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  Edward James
• 
  Contractor wins Oman water network contract

  2 March 2026

  Egypt’s Hassan Allam Construction has won an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract for a water transmission network project from Al-Jardaa to Mihlaih (Sawt) in Oman’s North Al-Sharqiyah Governorate.

  The contract was awarded by Oman Water & Wastewater Services Company (OWWSC).

  The scope includes 76 kilometres of transmission lines and nearly 600km of distribution networks.

  The project also covers seven high-capacity reservoirs, two pumping stations and seven solar-powered systems.

  Hassan Allam Construction won a separate contract with OWWSC in August 2025 to build and supervise the construction of a large-scale water supply and wastewater system in Al-Amerat, Muscat.

  The Al-Amerat Catchment 10 water supply, sewer system and treated effluent networks project covers the construction of a 64km gravity sewer network.

  Last month, MEED exclusively revealed that China’s Hunan Installation Overseas Engineering had won an EPC contract to build water supply and sewage networks in Muscat. 

  The contract was awarded by state utility Nama Water Services (NWS).

  

  https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15823693/main.jpg

  Mark Dowdall
• 
  RTA opens bridge as part of Trade Centre road project

  2 March 2026

  Dubai’s Roads & Transport Authority (RTA) has opened a key bridge as part of the World Trade Centre roundabout project.

  Extending 1 kilometre (km) from Sheikh Zayed Road to Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Street towards Deira, the bridge has a capacity of 3,000 vehicles an hour.

  It comprises two lanes, reducing journey time from six minutes to one minute.

  In a statement, the RTA said overall project construction progress has reached 60%.

  The project’s main construction works are being undertaken by the local firm Wade Adams, which was awarded a AED696m ($189m) contract to upgrade the Trade Centre roundabout in October 2024.

  The project will enhance connections between Sheikh Zayed Road and five main streets: Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Street, Sheikh Rashid Street, 2nd December Street, Zabeel Palace Street and Al-Mustaqbal Street.

  The project’s scope covers the construction of five bridges spanning a total length of 5km. 

  In addition to the recently opened bridge, two other two-lane bridges will extend 2km and will connect Sheikh Rashid Street with 2nd December Street, with a capacity of 6,000 vehicles an hour.

  The fourth and fifth two-lane bridges will span 2km from Al-Majles Street to 2nd December Street and will connect Al-Mustaqbal Street with 2nd December Street, with a capacity of 6,000 vehicles an hour.

  The scope also covers converting the existing roundabout into a surface intersection to improve the flow of traffic inbound from Sheikh Zayed Road to 2nd December Street and of southbound traffic from Al-Mustaqbal Street to Sheikh Zayed Road.

  

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  Yasir Iqbal