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Hill International chosen to manage two-thirds of Saudi Arabia’s schools

US consultant Hill International has been awarded a contract to provide facilities management (FM) consultancy services for some 4,000 schools in Saudi Arabia.

The Philadelphia-based company will act as the managing agent for the Tatweer Building Company (TBC), which represents the Saudi Ministry of Education.

The award consists of two headquarters buildings in Riyadh and around 2,000 schools and administrative buildings in the Saudi capital, as well as another 2,000 buildings in the Eastern Province.

Hill International commented in a press statement that each project presented "unique challenges, from geographical dispersion to local service provider management".

There is scope for this programme to expand in the future. The Saudi schools estate has more than 6,000 sites and TBC is scaling up its operations to accommodate all of themas part of the ministry’s goal of transforming the country’s educational system.

Brian Murphy, Hill’s director of facilities management, commented: "The Saudi Ministry of Education is striving to deliver the best class of education for its students.

"As education is important to all of us, we are very pleased with this great opportunity to enable us to showcase our FM skills and raise the bar in the delivery standards within the region by applying our best international practices."

About 45% of Hill International’s orders come from the Middle East and North Africa. In November last year, its chief executive, Raouf Ghali, predicted that demand for construction work would revive in the region over the first half of this year (see further reading).

Image: A 700-seat lecture theatre in a Riyadh school (Cschellenberger/CC BY-SA 4.0r)

Further reading:

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