Purpose Statement
Neom is the city of the feature, and, in recent times, Saudi Arabia has attempted to ditch its reliance on oil and find a new alternative to its oil-reliant GDP. The 2030 vision was born out of excitement to help facilitate this new vision. Part of that vision includes Neom, or, as I like to call it, “The Saudis equivalent to Noah’s Ark.” Neom is separated into four different regions: Sindalah, THE LINE, Trojena, and Oxagon (NEOM, 2017). In this paper, I will be focusing on Trojena and, in particular, the company that is building Trojena, which is Bechtel.
Organization Overview and Scope of Work
Bechtel is a global construction company, which is based in the United States. Bechtel was established in 1898 with more than 160 infrastructure projects in different countries (Lawler, 2019). The Saudi government contracted Bechtel in 2019 to assist with the design and construction of Trojena (Lawler, 2019). Bechtel will enhance Neom’s Trojena infrastructure, like developing NEOM’s waste, energy, water, and transportation in the Trojena region (Lawler, 2019).
In addition to the Bechtel development of Trojena, Bechtel will develop airports, seaports, high-speed rail, a road system, and a water delivery system. According to Davids (2020), Bechtel will also manage the actual building of this significant infrastructure. Bechtel was chosen because of its 120 years of experience working on challenging infrastructure projects all around the globe to assist NEOM in creating cutting-edge water, energy, transportation, and waste systems (Lawler, 2019). This will be done almost entirely from scratch because of its vast engineering and project management expertise.
Operational and Process Challenges
Neom presents a hope, more precisely, a vision for Saudia Arabia, yet making this hope or vision into reality does not come with challenges that Bechtel needs to tackle. Bechtel’s building of the NEOM Trojena region is expected to provide a number of operational and procedural problems. One of those problems is completing large-scale infrastructure projects, where Bechtel will be required to manage capacity and demand as operations are quickly ramped up (Slack et al., 2023).
Not only that, but NEOM also needs excellent process management to be completed effectively, or else delays could be expected from the project. Furthermore, Bechtel needs the flexibility to adjust to modifications in a project (Slack et al., 2023). This is due to the treacherous mountain landscape that needs to be worked on, and this is due to the risks and uncertainties associated with long-term developments of a project of this magnitude.
At this point, it should be noted that another huge challenge is the design. Due to the desert region, Bechtel must find and rent large volumes of building supplies, equipment, and skilled personnel, which presents challenges for resource management (Slack et al., 2023).
Another challenge that Bechtel will face is moving employees and goods; meeting this demand also requires significant logistical operations. Given the many ongoing building projects and due to the size and magnitude of this project, a considerable problem can stem from the inherent dangers of quality control that presents additional difficulties where the cost of completing the project on time will hinder quality control management. (Slack et al., 2023). Still, such massive projects are necessary for Bechtel at the moment, given its constant revenue decrease from $32.9 billion in 2016 to $21.8 billion in 2019 (Statista, 2023). Successful completion of this new metropolis will need careful operations and process management.
Relevance to Team Assessment
For our team assessment, I think Bechtel is a fantastic company to study because, from my research, I believe that operations and process management concepts from Chapter 1/2, where, for instance, efficient capacity management is necessary for building a new city and quickly scaling up construction activities. This is the key concept that the book talks about (Slack et al., 2023). Then, demand and capacity must be balanced as the project expands.
Furthermore, due to the complexity of the NEOM landscape and treacherous terrain that Bechtel needs to work on, Bechtel requires significant process management in order to properly execute the different infrastructure and building projects that they need to construct (Slack et al., 2023). Efficiency and workflow procedures are also of high importance. Moreover, Bechtel must be adaptable to changes in design or scope due to the magnitude and change in desire that Bechtel needs to work on.
References
Davids, G. (2020). Bechtel secures executive project management contract for NEOM’s cognitive cities. ME Construction News. Web.
NEOM. (2017). Made to change. Web.
Slack, N., Brandon-Jones, A., Burgess, N., & Slack, N. (2023). Essentials of Operations Management. Pearson.
Statista. (2023). Bechtel’s global revenue from FY 2006 to FY 2019 (in billion U.S. dollars). Web.