The local El-Seif Engineering Contracting has been awarded an estimated $1.4bn contract to build an Interior Ministry housing development in Saudi Arabia.

The housing complex will contain 2,800 villas and will be located in the Najran province, which is located close to the Yemeni border in the southwestern area of the kingdom.

This is the fourth major construction deal the ministry has awarded El-Seif in 2015. In February, the contractor was awarded two deals worth about SR8bn ($2.1bn) for constructing housing and related infrastructure in Jizan in the southwest of Saudi Arabia.

Each project will involve building three different towns. For the first project, with a contract value of about SR4.5bn, the contractor will build 2,400 housing units through a mixture of villas and apartments. The project will also include building shops, clinics, military offices, and the associated utilities infrastructure.

For the second contract, worth about SR3.5bn, the local firm will build 2,100 residential units and similar infrastructure to the first project.

Also in February, El-Seif was awarded an estimated $350m contract to build a headquarters building for the Interior Ministry in Jeddah. The headquarters complex will include a three-storey building and other security buildings. The complex will cover a total area of 525,000 square metres.

The local contractor is already working on some major construction projects for the ministry as part of its security compounds network programme, known as the King Abdullah Project (KAP). In June 2014, El-Seif was awarded an estimated SR2.5bn deal to build phase 2b of its security network scheme.

The phase will involve building various headquarters, administrative and residential buildings at sites in Hail and Tabuk. This is the second deal El-Seif has won on the scheme, with the contractor winning the contract to build phase 2a of the project in December.

The Interior Ministry has become an increasingly key client in Saudi Arabia’s construction sector in recent years. Since 2012, the authority has awarded more than $17bn-worth of construction contracts.