The Qatari government and the organisers of the Fifa football World Cup in 2022 need to move quicker to finalise plans for the tournament in order to give contractors enough time to complete the required projects, said speakers at the MEED Qatar Projects 2014 conference in Doha on 18 March.

“It is still unclear how many stadiums will be built (for the tournament) and the timeframe for completing them,” said Chris Scudamore, an advisory partner at PwC Qatar. “We hear things that the government is prioritising work and that certain decisions are now being made centrally, but in my view there needs to be some firm publication put out in the next six to eight months about the full scope that needs to be delivered. Until that point, there will continue to be a lot of variability and waiting.”

Regard Yakou, vice-president and Qatar country manager at the US’ Hill International, agreed that contractors have been kept in the dark about the government’s World Cup plans.

“We have been waiting for the past two and a half years for announcements of schemes and nothing has happened,” he said.  “We are one of the largest PMC [project management consultancy] firms in the world and yet we have no idea what the supreme committee has decided on. So I don’t know about anyone else, but I think firm decisions need to be made by the government and they need to announce these things. I mean, why are they a secret? I don’t understand. We are all here to help build the country and deliver these projects.

“I heard this gentleman earlier today say all these tenders are being issued, but we haven’t seen any of them. I don’t know where they are issuing these tenders. Maybe they are issuing them in secret, I don’t know. But we haven’t heard anything about this.”

If the government’s plans are not fleshed out soon, it risks not being able to finish these schemes on time, said Bassem Soueidan, vice-president at the US’ Parsons.

“The reason we need to know today is that there is only so much capacity of labour, transportation and so forth that is available,” he said. “Qatar is not the only place in the GCC where megaprojects are being built, so there are only so many schemes that contractors can handle.”