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It was no surprise when Cityscape Jeddah was billed as the best yet, with Saudi Arabia remaining the region’s most attractive market for developers, designers and contractors.
The presence of the Gulf’s major architectural firms, as well as prominent developers reflected the excitement that those in the Middle East feel about the Saudi market. The event saw old Saudi hands, new kids on the block and local firms rubbing shoulders with the Saudi money-men who are financing the kingdom’s seemingly unstoppable construction boom.
It is an exciting time to be making a move into Saudi Arabia, explained Charles Collett, Aedas’s man in the kingdom, from the firm’s large stand in the Jeddah Exhibition Centre. While Aedas has worked on design projects in Saudi Arabia, its opening of a new office in Riyadh last month demonstrated a its focus on KSA.
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“The plan here is similar to the way we go into many countries, we create a local presence first and I think the projects follow from that – rather than having a lot of big projects,” Collett said.
Collett said that in order to crack the Saudi market, firms had to have a hands on approach to the kingdom, to be able to meet people and have a solid base in the country. He added that Aedas plans to open an office in Jeddah within a year.
“There are a lot of consultants who fly in with the hope of winning work, but we don’t expect to win work until we have a presence in the kingdom,” he said.
“We want to get things really moving. This is a great time to be entering the market but there’s a lot of competition.”
A design firm with a fair bit of experience in the kingdom is DWP, the Bahrain-based architects behind a number of developments in Al Khobar. Kristina Zanic, executive director and founding partner, points out that Saudi Arabia not only has the money to fund massive construction projects, but it has the will to see them through.
“They have the space so they are going to look at things that are more ambitious but I also think that Saudi Arabia is opening up to the world so there is more opportunity for consultants here. They have these really huge visions and they are looking for something mega,” she said.
Zanic, whose firm has offices in a number of challenging markets, including Vietnam, China and Thailand, said that developers in Saudi Arabia tended to have a real respect for foreign designers, making working in the kingdom far easier than in other areas of the world.
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