Saudi forms arbitration body for stalled projects in Riyadh

Saudi construction authorities in capital Riyadh have created an independent arbitration committee to follow up its projects to prevent delays by the contractors, an official was quoted on Wednesday as saying.

The high commission for the development of Arriyadh admitted that many projects awarded by the government to contractors have either been delayed or stalled because of heavy reliance on sub-contractors and other reasons.

“To ensure success and prevent further delays in its projects, the Commission has formed an arbitration committee from outside the Commission to follow up all its projects sand report on each of them regularly,” Muzahim Al Deeb, director of roads and services in the Commission said, quoted by the Arabic language daily ‘Al Watan’.

Deeb, who was speaking at a contractors’ seminar at the Riyadh chamber of commerce and industry on Tuesday, said many projects in the capital and other parts of Saudi Arabia have been stalled because of inefficient management, poor studies of the projects, low technical specifications and resources of some contractors, the absence of coordination among the concerned parties and “overlapping” of responsibilities among government departments linked to the projects.

He said other factors include what he described as the companies’ heavy reliance on sub-contractors and slow decisions to resolve problems facing the project.

Speaking at the seminar, the chairman of the national contractors committee Fahd Al Hammadi said nearly 40 per cent of the government projects have faced delays and that most of them have been withdrawn from the contractors.

He said the contractors are pushing ahead with plans to “put their house in order” through the creation of an autonomous authority to handle the sector.

“The Saudi contractors aim to create an authority to look after this vital sector and increase its efficiency so it will be capable of shouldering its responsibilities in executing projects on time and with great efficiency,” he said.

“We will soon sign an agreement among all contracting companies to create this autonomous authority before we have it presented to the Monarch.”

Hammadi’s figures showed Saudi Arabia has the largest contracting sector in the Arab world, with its combined assets standing at around SR199 billion ($53 billion), controlled by nearly 115,000 registered contractors.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.