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NMDC plans to award Mukaab raft works ‘very shortly’

10 September 2025

 

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The award of the estimated $1bn contract for the main raft works on the Mukaab will take place ‘very shortly’, according to a senior director on the project.

In a presentation at the Future Projects Forum in Riyadh on 9 September, Mike Lyons, chief project delivery officer at New Murabba Development Company (NMDC), also revealed that foundation works are almost complete, and that tendering has started on the main structure of the estimated $5bn-plus gigaproject.

“Very shortly, we will announce the award of the contract to pour the raft for the Mukaab,” said Lyons. “At the same time, we’re already launching a number of procurements to help us build the skeleton, the central tower, the four corner towers and the rigs that will hold the structure of the Mukaab together. It’s happening here and now.”

“We’ve already moved more than 15 million cubic metres of material with China Harbour. As of last week, with our piling contractor [UAE-based] HSSG, we’ve achieved over 1,000 piles in the ground out of a total of 1,200, so we’ve nearly finished with the foundation.”

Lyons’ comments suggest that the massive Mukaab and the surrounding New Murabba downtown development will proceed as planned despite the turbulence facing Saudi Arabia’s gigaprojects programme.

The Najdi-inspired Mukaab, the Arabic word for ‘cube’, is the centrepiece of New Murabba. At 400 metres in height, width and length, it will be one of the largest structures ever built.

Internally, it will have a tower on top of a spiral base and a structure featuring 2 million square metres (sq m) of floor space designated for hospitality. It will feature commercial spaces, cultural and tourist attractions, residential and hotel units, and recreational facilities.

“We are just about to place the largest structural steel order ever placed,” said Lyons. “To build the Mukaab, we need 1 million tonnes of structural steel alone. And that’s not reinforcement steel – that’s structural steel, so imagine the sheer scale of what we are trying to create.

“Nobody has ever built a building of this scale and complexity. The Mukaab is the heaviest building in the world – four times heavier than the parliament building in Bucharest in both scale and size.”

MEED reported in June that contractor consortiums had been invited to bid for the three packages comprising the Central Core Tower, Outriggers and Vertical Ribs, which together are likely to have a total cost in excess of $2.5bn.

Football stadium

In the presentation, Lyons also confirmed that the football stadium element of New Murabba would proceed as planned and be ready in time for the Fifa 2034 World Cup, with procurement starting soon for the early construction involvement (ECI) work.

“This is one of the stadiums that has been designed to be very buildable,” explained Lyons. “It’s mainly at grade level with a capacity of 43,000 fans. We’ve already completed our prequalification and we’ve gone out to the market now to find the contractor that will join us to help build this.

“The way we want to do this is to have a design-and-build contract, but also have an ECI stage at the beginning to get the best ideas from contractors to help us build the stadium in the right way, make it cost-effective and make sure we deliver it well ahead of time.”

Broader development

The wider New Murabba destination in northwest Riyadh will total more than 25 million sq m of floor area and feature more than 104,000 residential units, 9,000 hotel rooms and over 980,000 sq m of retail space.

The development will also include 1.4 million sq m of office space, 620,000 sq m of leisure facilities and 1.8 million sq m of space dedicated to community facilities.

NMDC is a subsidiary of the Public Investment Fund (PIF). Development work on other PIF project companies, notably Neom, has slowed dramatically over the past 18 months as funding challenges and rising costs have put a dent in the gigaprojects programme.

Data from MEED Projects shows that from a peak of $34bn-worth of gigaproject contract awards in 2023, spending last year fell to $23bn and was just $6bn year-to-date as of August 2025.

READ THE SEPTEMBER 2025 MEED BUSINESS REVIEW – click here to view PDF

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Distributed to senior decision-makers in the region and around the world, the September 2025 edition of MEED Business Review includes:
To see previous issues of MEED Business Review, please click here
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