Crown Prince Mohamad bin Naif al-Saud, who is also Interior Minister and Chairman of the Supreme Hajj Committee, has ordered the establishment of a technical committee to oversee development and expansion projects in Mecca, according to the Saudi Gazette.

The committee will be responsible for the supervision of expansion projects at the Grand Mosque.

The establishment of the committee comes after a crane from work on the Grand Mosque collapsed and killed 109 people in September last year. Some 717 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede near the holy city of Mecca during the Hajj pilgrim later in the same month.

At the time Saudi Arabia came under heavy criticism over the safety of pilgrims at Islam’s holiest site.

The tragedies were the latest in a long list of fatal accidents during hajj as increasing numbers of Muslims travel to the Mecca to perform the pilgrimage, which is one of the five central tenets of Islam.

According to the Saudi Central Department of Statistics and Information, the number of people attending hajj rose from 57,000 in 1921 to a high of 3.2 million three years ago,

The number of pilgrims dropped to just over two million in 2014.

Riyadh has steered heavy investment into Mecca’s infrastructure over the past decade in order to improve safety during the pilgrimage.

There are $31bn-worth of projects either planned or under way in the wider province of Mecca, according to regional projects tracker MEED Projects. Contract awards are expected this year for the expansion of the metro network.