Saudi Bechtel looking for job seekers

Defying global employment trends the Saudi Arabian Bechtel Company (Sabco) has revealed it intends to hire 70 new employees by the end of the year to work on the expansion of Jubail Industrial City.

The programme manager for Jubail, Dr George Dinic, told Construction Week they were going to bolster their qualified workforce from 300 to 370 in order to cope with the workload.

Sabco is currently overseeing a multi-billion dollar expansion of Jubail Industrial City, which includes the development of Jubail Two, an 84km2 industrial zone for petrochemical related industries.

Other projects within the city include four 10km2 residential districts, a 195km heavy rail network, a university for 18,000 students and labour accommodation for 12,000.

Dinic said Sabco was benefiting from the Saudi Arabian government’s 2009 budget which pledged substantial funds for infrastructure projects in a bid to spur economic growth and maintain employment levels.

He said the Royal Commission for developing Jubail Industrial City had a 2009 budget of US $880 million (SAR 3.3 billion); a 35-40% increase from the previous year which will help the firm expedite its significant construction programme for the year.

“The Royal Commission and Sabco would have about 50 active contracts in construction at any point in time,” said Dinic.

“That is a huge programme and a fairly demanding challenge because it’s really like closing a contract a week.

“They can go from small contracts such as 10 million riyals ($2.7 million) and right up to 500 million riyals ($133 million) depending on the type of contract.”

Construction on Jubail Two’s infrastructure began in 2004 and is being completed over four stages. Dinic said stage one is expected to be finished this month and the final stage in December 2015.

Jubail Two is the intended location of an $8 billion refinery by Satrop – a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and France’s Total.

The refinery will have the capacity to process 400,000 barrels of Arabian heavy crude a day to produce gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and petrochemical products for export and domestic consumption.