There were two individual contract awards in December that topped $1bn. The largest was the $1.4bn deal secured by South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries for the construction of the power plant component of Kuwait’s first private power and water scheme.

Hyundai will build the gas-fired 1,500MW, combined-cycle power plant, while Sidem will build the 107 million gallons a day (g/d) desalination component of the Al-Zour North project. The consortium is scheduled to complete the construction of the Independent Water and Power Project (IWPP) in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Hyundai and Sidem signed contracts with Shamal Al-Zour Al-Oula, the special purpose vehicle (SPV) company awarded the contract to build and operate the Al-Zour project, on 12 December, the same day the project company signed the energy conversion and water purchase agreement (ECWPA) with Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW).

The other $1bn-plus award was secured by a joint venture of UAE-based Arabtec Construction and Spain’s Constructora San Jose. They won a $1.2bn contract from Abu Dhabi General Services (Musanada) for the construction of the New Al-Ain hospital in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Musanada is now the largest construction client in Abu Dhabi after the emirate’s executive council decided earlier in 2013 to make it responsible for the delivery of all capital expenditure projects outside the oil and gas and utilities sectors. Also in December, Musanada awarded two contracts totalling $582m for the construction of the new highway connecting Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Ghantoot Transport & General Contracting Establishment won one of the deals, while a joint venture of Tristar Engineering & Construction and Italy’s Salini Costruttori won the other,

The only other contract valued at more than $500m was secured by Saudi Arabia’s El-Seif Engineering Contracting Company for work on the security compounds network programme.

The $667m contract is for phase 2a and involves the development of seven security complexes across Saudi Arabia.