Calling the shots

The company has a stellar list of government clients in the GCC and overseas.
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Consultancy firm MWH Global has diversification and expansion on its bulging agenda. Director of operations Andrew Scoble tells Utilities Middle East about the company’s future plans.

With the economic recession thinning out the excellent consultants from the bad, the onus is on the best companies to provide a stronger and more varied portfolio of products to their clients. For the utilities industry, which is still benefiting from significant injections into regional infrastructure budgets, this is coming to mean a tendency towards integrated solutions.

No longer is it enough for the larger contractors or consultancies to offer single products, but there is an inherent requirement for a differentiated strategy that provides maximum value to the client, especially where budgetary constraints may exist.

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Fulfilling that demanding role is ‘wet infrastructure’ specialist consultant MWH Global, which is leveraging its 6,000-strong worldwide workforce to bring newer offerings to its range of stellar Middle Eastern clients. With a 60-year history in the region, the firm is not new to the finer workings of the local industry, but director of operations for MWH Middle East
Andrew Scoble is adamant that the consultancy will not rest on its laurels.

“The concept of wet infrastructure also includes programme management and asset management – areas in which we’ve pushed the boundaries quite far in comparison to other international consultants – but we’re mainly focused on water, wastewater and process technologies, along with solid waste and renewable energy,” Scoble explains.

“Most of our history here consisted largely of long-term basic engineering for clients, focusing on issues like municipal drainage and water distribution, but about six years ago, we decided to import our global knowledge and carry out a large amount of process design.”

The fruits of that decision are obvious via a quick look at the local MWH portfolio, which contains a significant amount of government work throughout the GCC. In Dubai, the firm acts as Dubai Municipality’s main advisor and supervisor for the mammoth Jebel Ali Wastewater Treatment Plant (WTP), which is planned to be one of the largest in the world.

In Abu Dhabi, MWH is also involved – either as a client’s engineer, contractor’s designer or lender’s agent, to carry out due diligence or as a checker - with a high percentage of the WTPs being built, some of which are extraordinarily complex.

The firm is the lender’s engineer for Abu Dhabi Sewerage Services Company (ADSSC)’s Al Wathba and Al Saad plants, and is also involved with the more advanced membrane bioreactor (MBR) facilities on Reem Island and Saadiyat Island.

“Water treatment for us in this region is still quite embryonic, because there has long been a focus on the larger and more centralised thermal desal plants,” says Scoble.

“Our experience globally has been on reverse osmosis [RO] membrane technology, so we are now starting to look at smaller plants, or brackish water plants for clients that are using other types of source water such as groundwater or recycled industrial effluent.”