meed-logo

line1 line2 line3
SIGN IN / REGISTER

Projects show resilience in 2026

30 January 2026

 

While priorities may have shifted over the past two years, the region’s projects market continues to display resilience and will offer opportunities in 2026 in areas including Saudi Arabia’s gigaprojects progamme, regional rail schemes and other strategic sectors.

Despite much having been written over the past two years about the reprioritisation of Saudi Arabia’s gigaprojects, work is continuing. 

“They are still going, all the gigaprojects,” says Pierre Santoni, president – infrastructure for Europe, Middle East and Africa (Emea) at US-based Parsons. 

“Even Neom, where the slowdown has been widely publicised, we still have people there working on Oxagon, and we still have people on the Line. All the other ones are still ongoing,” he adds. “We just signed a contract to design all the infrastructure around the Mukaab for New Murabba. We have live tenders and are designing the public realm for Diriyah Gate 2. We are on Sports Boulevard, King Salman Park and the expansion of King Abdullah Financial District. All of those are ongoing.”

Another focus for the region is rail. Parsons led the Riyadh Metro Transit Consultants joint venture that project managed the first six lines of Riyadh Metro, which opened in late 2024. 

“Riyadh Metro was a great success for Parsons and our partners, and all the people involved. That was the original gigaproject. At one point, there were 50,000 workers on Riyadh Metro every day,” says Santoni.

The success of this project, and of earlier schemes such as Dubai Metro and Doha Metro, combined with high-level governmental backing, have given the rail sector in the region unprecedented momentum. 

“Rail is a major market in the region at the moment,” says Santoni. “The UAE is a good example – you have the freight railway and the opening of passenger traffic. The high-speed rail project has also started. In Abu Dhabi, the tram on Yas Island was launched last year. In Dubai, the Blue Line is in full construction mode with delivery firmly scheduled for 2029. It is a major undertaking, and the intention of the Roads & Transport Authority is to continue with further extensions, which is much needed given the growth in population.”

Roads and airports are two other areas of focus for Parsons. The company continues to work as the lead consultant for major road schemes in the UAE, and it secured delivery partner roles in 2025 for the airside and landside infrastructure at Riyadh’s King Salman International airport.

Operations and maintenance 

The infrastructure market is not just about building new projects. As the region’s infrastructure ages, operations and maintenance (O&M) has become a central pillar of Parsons’ strategy, Santoni notes.

“The game is not just about building new infrastructure; it’s about making existing infrastructure perform better,” he says. 

“A lot of O&M considerations are coming to the forefront. We are deploying technology like iNET, which is Parsons’ proprietary intelligent traffic management system. We did the initial feasibility study last year and managed to improve transit times through 320 intersections in Riyadh. We just signed a contract to fully deploy the system. 

The game is not just about building new infrastructure; it’s about making existing infrastructure perform better

“It’s not just physical infrastructure; it’s the management of all that through technology-enabled tools.” 

Santoni says this technological “brain” is also being applied to the King Salman Park project, which involves developing the world’s largest urban park and requires a highly complex O&M system to manage it effectively. Automated management of soil and water for hundreds of plant species will remove the need for a vast on-site workforce.

Traditionally known for core engineering and transport, Parsons is increasingly recognised for work in other sectors, including hospitality and defence. The firm is currently managing over 30,000 luxury hotel keys in the region, a surge driven by Saudi Arabia’s tourism goals.

“We became recognised, sort of unknowingly, for these complex, niche-type hospitality projects where it’s about preserving heritage and respecting culture, but doing so in the most modern and technologically advanced way possible. This is going to be a very nice market for us in the future,” Santoni says. 

“We also signed two major contracts last year for confidential defence clients in Saudi Arabia to deliver infrastructure.”

Capacity crunch

As the industry faces a talent shortage, Santoni highlights Parsons’ internal mobility as a competitive advantage. While competitors have struggled with project transitions, Parsons has focused on relocating staff to sustain its growth.

“We did see a lot of people either exiting Saudi Arabia or relocating within,” Santoni says. “We have been very good at relocating people. This is one of our strengths. When projects changed pace, we made a conscious effort to relocate people, give them options and extend them on the job until something else came up. Last year alone, about 350 people were relocated internally within the region. We are still in hiring mode.”

Being a multidisciplinary firm present in several countries gives flexibility. “In Saudi Arabia, most of Parsons’ work has traditionally been project management consultancy (PMC), although we have had for a number of years now a growing design office in Riyadh with an offshoot in Dammam and one in Jeddah. 

“We currently have almost 300 people in our design office in Saudi Arabia, which is slightly less than 10% of our workforce in the kingdom. The rest are doing PMC work. In Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, it’s mostly the more traditional model of design and construction supervision work with some PMC,” says Santoni. 

https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15527825/main.jpg
Colin Foreman

Register for MEED's guest program now to access this article.

Click here to register
Exclusive from Meed
Related Articles
  • Egypt adapts its foreign policy approach

    10 February 2026

     

    Egypt’s policy efforts over the past 12 months reflect a recalibration of the state’s survival strategy amid chronic economic headwinds, security challenges on its borders and a geopolitical landscape of shifting regional alliances and an irresolute US position.

    In response, Cairo is pursuing an increasingly diversified approach to its foreign policy, geared expressly towards economic survival and only minimal geopolitical triage.

    The unifying logic is resilience: preserving economic stability, state authority and external relevance in the face of an increasingly constrained environment of regional instability, negative economic multipliers and shifting global power structures.

    Diplomatic overtures

    At the regional level, Cairo has reinserted itself as a diplomatic actor of consequence, but this activism is best understood as a reaction rather than an expression of regional leadership.

    Cairo’s mediation role in Gaza, particularly following the January 2025 ceasefire, has become the symbolic centrepiece of its foreign policy identity, but its efforts in this area ultimately stem from the conflict’s direct strategic relevance to Egypt.

    By convening an extraordinary Arab summit in March 2025 and advancing its own reconstruction framework, Cairo sought to position itself as a key custodian of Gaza’s next chapter and – more cynically – a potential beneficiary of the post-war process.

    Yet Egypt’s role remains structurally bounded, with Cairo operating less as an agenda-setter than as a facilitator within frameworks principally shaped by US priorities, Israeli security imperatives and Gulf financing.

    In this context, Cairo’s efforts reflect a bid to maintain diplomatic relevance and remain indispensable in a situation where it ultimately lacks decisive influence.

    A similar pragmatic logic shapes Egypt’s posture in the Horn of Africa.

    Faced with the unresolved Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) dispute, Cairo has shifted away from diplomatic and legal confrontation towards alliance-building with Somalia and Eritrea, seeking leverage through regional networks.

    In Sudan, Cairo’s posture reflects a harder security logic. It supports the Sudanese Armed Forces out of a fear – arguably justified – of the outcomes that any further weakening of the central government in Khartoum could bring to Egypt’s borders.

    A fragmented Sudan would threaten not only Egypt’s southern flank, but also its Red Sea trade and Nile water security, compounding its concerns related to the GERD.

    Across the board, the pattern is that Egypt’s engagement is reactive and shaped more by vulnerability and risk aversion than by strategic assertiveness.

    Cairo is therefore an actor that is at once diplomatically present and vocal on regional crises, yet rarely instrumental in shaping events; its diplomacy is structurally constrained by informal allegiances and external dependencies.

    Strategic breadth

    Aside from its broadly cautious posture, Egypt’s foreign policy and domestic economic policy also exhibit deliberate diversification and geopolitical hedging.

    In recent years, Cairo’s fragile position – amid the stymying of Suez Canal revenue flows – has intensified its outreach to diverse political and financial backers, including countries with which it has previously been at odds.

    Although the IMF remains a constant presence in Egypt’s fiscal landscape, the past few years have seen Cairo leverage its relationships with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkiye to attract billions of dollars in foreign direct investment and financial support.

    The recourse to support from Qatar and Turkiye is particularly notable given Egypt’s diplomatic decoupling from both in 2013 following the ousting of president Mohamed Morsi, whom both countries supported.

    Diplomatic ties with Turkiye were formally severed in 2013, and the relationship worsened in 2014 over Ankara’s support for a rival faction in the Libyan civil war. Cairo then cut ties with Doha in 2017 following the Gulf diplomatic crisis.

    These tensions were gradually eased from 2021: the Al-Ula Declaration rehabilitated relations with Qatar, while back-channel engagement with Turkiye led to the restoration of diplomatic relations in 2023.

    In this light, while the UAE’s $35bn in foreign direct investment and the $5bn in support from Saudi Arabia in 2024 align with past politics, the $7.5bn in support from Qatar in 2025 and the $350m defence deal with Turkiye in 2026 represent the new.

    Cairo is also rapidly expanding its trade ties with China. By May 2025, 2,800 Chinese companies had invested $8bn in Egypt, according to Egypt’s General Authority for Investment and Free Zones. Total Chinese investments, including state-backed loans and development projects, amount to tens of billions of dollars and have consistently placed China as Egypt’s top trade partner over the past decade.

    Egypt’s accession to Brics in 2024 is a natural corollary of its growing ties with China.

    This contrasts with the $1.3bn in annual US military financing, which is conditional on Egypt purchasing and maintaining US-origin defence equipment and – implicitly – on remaining deferential to US and Israeli security concerns regarding Palestine.

    In late 2025, Egypt also secured a €4bn package from the European Union, in addition to a planned $2.3bn disbursement from its $8bn IMF Extended Fund Facility.

    Turning the corner

    The widening breadth of Cairo’s fiscal and financial backers is making it less reliant on any single source of support. While the IMF’s loans and reform programme underpin overall fiscal stability, Egypt’s outreach is increasingly enabling it to tackle outstanding liabilities.

    For instance, Egypt’s Ministry of Finance announced that 50% of the proceeds from a recent $3.5bn land sale to Qatar would be used to service domestic and external debt.

    The financially extractive aspect of Cairo’s foreign relations also represents a clear avenue of success for President Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi’s government, in sharp contrast with its limited ability to shape the geopolitical environment.

    And in the immediate term, it may be all that Cairo needs.

    With growth rising and inflation dropping, Egypt appears to be in a position to claw itself back from the fiscal cliff that has loomed over it for the past two years.

    That would be a significant achievement. And with domestic fortunes secured, Cairo could perhaps turn its attention outward again – towards projecting influence across the region.

    Image: Doha, Qatar – September 15, 2025: Egypt’s President Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi delivering his statement at the Emergency Arab-Islamic Summit to address the Israeli attack on Qatar

    MEED’s March 2026 report on Egypt also includes:

    > ECONOMY & BANKING: Egypt nears return to economic stability
    > POWER & WATER: Egypt utility contracts hit $5bn decade peak
    > CONSTRUCTION: Coastal destinations are a boon to Egyptian construction

     

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15615533/main.gif
    John Bambridge
  • MEED set to turn 69 years old next month

    10 February 2026

     

    Register for MEED’s 14-day trial access 

    MEED celebrates its 69th birthday early next month – a journey characterised by huge transformations and upheavals in the region, but with one constant that MEED has lived by from day one: the goal of helping the world understand what is happening in the Middle East and how to benefit from it. 

    MEED set out all those years ago to offer the business community and government analysts vital information on economic development and commercial opportunities in the region. While the medium might have changed, morphing from newsletter to newsstand to online, MEED has not deviated from this original, unwavering mission. 

    In its early days, MEED was the only comprehensive source of information on the Middle East. Now it is the region’s leading subscription-based online business intelligence service, offering – as it has done done for decades – the latest business news, interspersed with political updates, comment and analysis.

    From newsletter to newstand 

    The first issue of Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) was published on 8 March 1957 as a hand-printed newsletter in the wake of the Suez invasion.

    Former editor the late Abdullah Jonathan Wallace – son of MEED’s founder, Elizabeth Collard (pictured, right) – remembers first working at MEED when he was 15 years old. He would come home from school on Thursday evenings to his mother’s Dickensian office in the then highly unfashionable Covent Garden area of London.

    “My job was to fill the 100-or-so envelopes of the subscribers and take them to the post office. Many people would pass by on press day to help collate and staple the newsletter,” he recalled.

    Collard, a feisty champion of Arab causes and the driving force behind MEED for its first two decades, had the foresight to realise the potential the Middle East offered to Western business. 

    A noted economic analyst on the developing world, Collard produced MEED from her one-roomed office on a hand-cranked Ronco printing machine, with the help of two part-time secretaries. 

    It is no coincidence that the first edition coincided with International Women’s Day, a fitting occasion for a remarkable woman who, by the late 1960s, was brought in to advise Prime Minister Harold Wilson on Middle East affairs. 

    Among the friends and relatives who helped staple and stuff envelopes with the 12-page newletter was Essa Saleh al-Gurg, later to become the UAE’s ambassador to the UK, who was then training as a banker in London.

    Lacking any editorial resources, the Middle East Economic Digest was exactly what it said it was: a compilation from newspapers and other reports. Newspapers were flown in weekly from Cairo and Beirut, then translated and condensed. By June 1965, there were still only three staff members.

    “Until the oil boom of the early 1970s, when MEED really took off, we were just about making ends meet,” said Wallace. “We could not afford to hire seasoned journalists or experienced commentators and mostly took British graduates straight from university.

    “This changed a little when oil peaked around the end of 1979 at $37.42 a barrel ($111 at today's prices), but we still preferred to take on graduates and train them on the job due to our high requirement for balanced reporting and tight, accurate writing, which also needed to be finely nuanced to avoid censorship in some countries.

    “In business terms, the economies of Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey dominated the interest of Western exporters in the 1960s, together with the cosmopolitan and stylish Beirut as an entrepot and banking centre.

    “The oil-producing states of the GCC hardly registered on the Western business radar when I visited Dubai in 1968. The British had a firm hold on the Trucial States and infrastructure projects were undertaken by UK firms.”

    The big issues covered in Wallace’s early years at MEED included the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli conflicts, and the Camp David peace accords in 1978; Nasser’s death in 1970; the Lebanese civil war and the invasion of Lebanon by Syria; the 1980-89 Iran-Iraq War; and the assassinations of King Faisal Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia in 1975 and Egypt's President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

    Oil boom

    By the mid-1970s, MEED had become the MEED Group and was in the enviable position of receiving half of its revenue in advance from subscriptions. The other half came from advertising. Rising income streams let to expansion, including the launch of the African Economic Digest and the largest photographic library in the Middle East. A conference division was also started, which broke new ground, holding the Gulf's first banking conference in Bahrain in the late 1970s.

    “Increased revenue meant we could send our reporters to the region on a regular basis, open a bureau in Dubai and then Paris and Washington, and upgrade our typesetting and production equipment to allow us to print on faster, more sophisticated printing machines,” said Wallace.

    Since its launch in 1957, MEED has been tackling news issues head-on with groundbreaking exclusives that shape the Middle East

    By mid-1986, when it was acquired by Emap, MEED had far outgrown its early role of monitoring published news reports. It had a staff of 20 full-time journalists and 12 researchers and newsroom assistants, with more than 30 correspondents overseas, mostly in the Middle East itself.

    The newsletter of the early days became a weekly magazine, and then, as the face of media changed, transformed into a subscription-based online business intelligence service, which now publishes a monthly magazine, MEED Business Review. The business also includes MEED Projects, a subscription-only service offering in-depth project tracking through its database; and MEED Insight, MEED’s premium research division.

    Today, MEED is owned by GlobalData, a data analytics and consulting company, headquartered in London, UK, that acquired MEED Media from Ascential PLC in December 2017. The business is still growing, with more than 60 members of staff in its Dubai office.

     

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15615163/main.gif
    MEED Editorial
  • Contract award nears for Abha airport expansion PPP

    10 February 2026

     

    Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Holding Company (Matarat) and the National Centre for Privatisation & PPP (NCP) are said to be close to awarding a contract to develop and operate a new passenger terminal building and related facilities at Abha International airport.

    MEED understands that the negotiations are in the final stages and the contract will be awarded within a few weeks.

    The companies prequalified to bid for the contract are:

    • GMR Airports (India)
    • Mada TAV: Mada International Holding (local) / TAV Airports Holding
    • Touwalk Alliance: Skilled Engineers Contracting (local) / Limak Insaat (Turkiye) / Incheon International Airport Corporation (South Korea) / Dar Al-Handasah Consultants (Shair & Partners, Lebanon) /  Obermeyer Middle East (Germany/Abu Dhabi)
    • VI Asyad DAA: Vision International Investment Company (local) / Asyad Holding (local) / DAA International (Ireland)

    Located in Asir Province, the first phase of the Abha International airport public-private partnership (PPP) project will expand the terminal area from 10,500 square metres (sq m) to 65,000 sq m.

    In March last year, the clients held one-on-one meetings with prospective bidders in Riyadh.

    The contract scope includes a new rapid-exit taxiway on the existing runway, a new apron to serve the new terminal, access roads to the new terminal building and a new car park area.

    Additionally, the scope includes support facilities, such as an electrical substation expansion and a new sewage treatment plant. 

    Construction is scheduled for completion in 2028.

    The project will be developed under a build-transfer-operate (BTO) model and will involve designing, financing, constructing and operating a greenfield terminal.

    This will be the kingdom’s third airport PPP project, following the Hajj terminal at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International airport and the $1.2bn Prince Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz International airport in Medina.

    Higher capacity

    According to Matarat, Abha airport’s capacity will increase to accommodate over 13 million passengers annually – a 10-fold rise from its current 1.5 million capacity.

    Once completed, the airport will handle more than 90,000 flights a year, up from 30,000.

    The new terminal is also expected to feature 20 gates and 41 check-in counters, including seven new self-service check-in kiosks.

    The BTO contract duration is 30 years.

    The existing terminal, which served 4.4 million passengers in 2019, will be closed once the new terminal becomes operational.

    Matarat’s transaction advisory team for the project comprises UK-headquartered Deloitte as financial adviser, ALG as technical adviser and London-based Ashurst as legal adviser.

    ALSO READ: Saudi Arabia seeks Qassim airport PPP interest

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15615074/main.jpg
    Yasir Iqbal
  • Roshn and Agility to develop logistics park in Saudi Arabia

    10 February 2026

    Saudi Arabian gigaproject developer Roshn Group has signed an agreement with Kuwait’s Agility Logistics Parks (ALP) to establish a joint venture to develop a Grade A logistics park in the kingdom.

    The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Public Investment Fund Private Sector Forum in Riyadh on 9 February.

    The joint venture will develop the project on an area of about 1 million to 1.5 million square metres (sq m).

    The project’s timeline, budget and exact location were not disclosed.

    In November last year, ALP inaugurated a new Grade A logistics park in Jeddah. 

    The company subsequently said it would add 100,000 sq m of Grade A warehousing to the ALP warehousing complex in Riyadh. The expansion was expected to cost about SR250m ($66m).

    The company also operates a 200,000 sq m logistics park in Dammam and a 871,000 sq m facility in Riyadh.

    Roshn Group’s latest agreement follows its signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with UK-headquartered Cognita Schools to develop a new build-to-suit private school in its Sedra residential community in Riyadh.

    The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the Cityscape Global event held in Riyadh in November last year.

    Cognita operates more than 100 schools across 21 countries, serving over 100,000 students and employing 21,000 staff. It is already present in the region through schools such as Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai, the Repton Family of Schools and King’s College Riyadh.

    READ THE FEBRUARY 2026 MEED BUSINESS REVIEW – click here to view PDF

    Spending on oil and gas production surges; Doha’s efforts support extraordinary growth in 2026; Water sector regains momentum in 2025.

    Distributed to senior decision-makers in the region and around the world, the February 2026 edition of MEED Business Review includes:
    To see previous issues of MEED Business Review, please click here
    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15614887/main.jpg
    Yasir Iqbal
  • Saudi Arabia seeks Qassim airport PPP interest

    10 February 2026

    Saudi Arabia’s Civil Aviation Holding Company (Matarat), through the National Centre for Privatisation and PPP (NCP), has issued an expression of interest (EoI) for a tender to develop the Prince Naif Bin Abdulaziz International airport in the Qassim region.

    The EoI notice was issued on 9 February, and companies have until 23 February to submit responses. 

    The project scope includes the redevelopment of the passenger terminal as well as other associated facilities such as airside infrastructure, including runway, taxiways and aprons.

    The project will be developed on a design, finance, construction, operations, maintenance and transfer basis.

    The latest development follows Matarat Holding and NCP prequalifying five teams to bid for a contract to develop the new Taif international airport project in Mecca province in January.

    According to local media reports, four consortiums and one standalone company have been prequalified to proceed to the next stage of the project.

    The new Taif International airport will be located 21 kilometres southeast of the existing Taif airport, with a capacity to accommodate 2.5 million passengers by 2030.

    The clients opted for a 30-year build-transfer-operate (BTO) contract model, including the construction period.

    Previous tenders

    The Taif, Hail and Qassim airport schemes were previously tendered and awarded as PPP projects using a BTO model.

    Saudi Arabia’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) awarded the contracts to develop four airport PPP projects to two separate consortiums in 2017.

    A team of Tukey’s TAV Airports and the local Al-Rajhi Holding Group won the 30-year concession agreement to build, transfer and operate airport passenger terminals in Yanbu, Qassim and Hail.

    A second team, comprising Lebanon’s Consolidated Contractors Company, Germany’s Munich Airport International and local firm Asyad Group, won the BTO contract to develop Taif International airport.

    However, these projects stalled following the restructuring of the kingdom’s aviation sector.

    Saudi Arabia has already privatised airports, including the $1.2bn Prince Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz International airport in Medina, which was developed as a PPP and opened in 2015.

    https://image.digitalinsightresearch.in/uploads/NewsArticle/15614875/main.png
    Yasir Iqbal