King Abdullah Economic City - Term Paper Example

and Section # of King Abdullah Economic Background King Abdullah Economic is the biggest single private sector investment is a multi-billion dollar project in Rabigh, Saudi Arabia. The city is strategically located along the coast of the Red Sea, around 100 km north of Jeddah, an approximate hour away from the Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina by car, and an hour away from all Middle Eastern capital cities by plane. The city is divided in six main areas: the Sea Port, Industrial Zone, Central Business District, Educational Zone, Resort District and Residential Communities, and covers a massive area of 168 million m2. Upon completion in its expected 20 years, it will be as big as Washington DC and hold a population of over 1.4 million people with 1 million employment opportunities. Its education zone offers more than just highest standards of further education. The multi-university campus is set amongst lakes and can accommodate up to 20,000 and 7,500 faculty and staff members. Medical research and high technology development centers are only a few of the key features of this state of the art university complex. The main aim behind this city is to expand the economy, create employment opportunities for Saudi Arabia’s upcoming population along with attracting foreign investment, global trade, commerce and industry. The biggest factor helping this would be the seaport, with one of the most sophisticated craning system spread across 14million m2 along with various other remarkable features. This unlimited port will handle not only shipments but also around 300,000 pilgrims arriving by sea for the annual Hajj, and a high-speed railway link will connect Mecca, Medina and this Economic City. The financial area will cover 3.8million m2 of first class office space in addition to a wide range of retail and conventional living spaces. As this city’s main aim is not that of a tourist destination, it has been made keeping in mind the home requirements of the different income brackets that will prevail there. While wealthy residents will have waterside villas with berths for large yachts connected directly with the red sea, there are high-rise apartments for middle-income residents. This district is expected to be vibrantly alive with restaurants and cafés. Cost and Construction The total cost of the city is to be about 80 billion U.S. dollars (around SR 300 billion) and The Economic City, a Tadawul-listed company created from Emaar is heading the project. Emaar is a Dubai-based public joint stock company and is currently one of the world’s largest real estate companies. SAGIA (Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority) is the main facilitator of the project, and the project shall be looked after in supervisory terms by Saudi Consultant services, which Turner Arabia has been appointed as the Project Managers. The King Abdullah Economic City project has currently been put on hold because EMAAR went allegedly over budget. Currently there is no systems engineer involved in facilitating this mega project and only construction management firms are handling everything from all angles-- Can a construction management firm really do a sufficient job alone? Systems Engineer’s Input Systems engineering bares the responsibility of creating and executing an interdisciplinary process to ensure the customer’s needs are met in a reliable, high quality, cost-efficient and timely manner. According to Derek K. Hitchins (2007, 85-95) the basic job of a system engineer boils down to the following tasks: understand the problem, explore its alternatives, create a model of the solution, integrate different work departments to create outputs, assess performance and re-evaluate by observing outputs and using this information to make changes accordingly. Fundamentally a systems engineer is a master of technicalities and oversees an entire project from start to finish. Systems engineering is gradually growing beyond mainly minimizing problems to design optimization by integrating their basic tasks into something even more unified. As this field progresses, it is earning even more respect by the business industry, government and the academic world. Construction Manager’s Input A construction manager has a chief hand in planning as well as overseeing a given project, along with overseeing the budget and handling any issues that arise at any point. He is to look over a proposed project and determine jobs that need to be completed before starting with the project. Assisting with obtaining land for the project site, hiring and supervising workers, providing a budget, ordering supplies, handling the contract at end of construction, and ensuring that everyone involved stays on schedule are also tasks undertaken by a construction manager. Being a construction manager is essentially a job of multi-tasking. They are supervisors, planners and most likely over worked under all their different tasks. It is a directorial job that essentially requires organizational skills and leadership qualities. Only great leaders who can get their workers to complete a job properly would be successful construction managers. Construction Manager versus Systems Engineer Both construction managers and systems engineers have a common task of being chief supervisors who oversee a project from start to finish. The key difference between the two is that a construction manager is essentially limited with tasks and is strictly only an administrative manager who oversees work and takes executive decisions only. A systems engineer on the other hand is a lot more involved at each stage of the project with closeness greater than those limited strictly to management. They are to see from the eyes of an engineer where there are glitches in a plan, they figure out optimizing solutions and ensure they are implemented perfectly. It is quite easy to jumble and confuse the tasks to be undertaken by both as theirs seem to be jobs within a gray area and without any distinct outlines between where one’s responsibilities end and the others begin. Conclusion Since this project has been put on a halt because its construction management firm could not stay within the budget, a systems engineer seems to be the perfect solution for them at present. A construction manager’s duty would be to only give a detail of the expected costs that can be presently foreseen and determine what is and what is not within the budget. The main job now would be to re-evaluate their current position and find out solutions for the issues being faced. A systems engineer would understand exactly where the problem lies that is causing the excessive financial drain, and figure out alternative cost effective solutions for the issues. Another problem with this project has been time management. Having started development in December 2005, its first phase was initially expected to be completed by 2007. As with most construction projects, its estimated deadlines for when a portion of the project would be ready have been constantly postponed by years. This is obviously a result of unforeseen complications that keep coming up. While the task of handling problems that take place mid-project falls under the charge of a construction manager, his specialization is strictly managerial and he would not be capable of figuring out the root cause of the problem. On the other hand, a systems engineer would be able to gauge the source of the problem and then carry the project forward towards a solution against whatever has been causing the consistent and repeated delay. It seems to be fairly obvious that adding systems engineers to their team would only be good for the construction managing firm. They can then focus on the administrative aspect while the system engineers bring in their problem solving expertise to the table. The level of productivity would definitely be directly proportional to the number of participants in this case, and it’s a well established fact already that two brains are definitely better than one. Bibliography Derek K. Hitchins, Systems Engineering: A 21st Century Systems Methodology West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd 2007 (85-95, 180-197) Daniel W. Halpin, Construction Management, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons 2006 (47-59) Crispin Thoroldm. New cities rise from Saudi desert. BBC News, King Abdullah Economic City. 11 June 2008. Anne-Birte Stensgaard. Senior News Editor. Emaar, The Economic City celebrates SR1bn sales from residential units in KAEC. 24th July. 2008 Mbasrawi. King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC). 25th July. 2007 Read More