The slowdown of the Saudi construction market has not yet bottomed out, say analysts in the kingdom that fear that the worst is yet to come.

The kingdom’s contractors have suffered as a result and as contract awards dry up, companies must start looking at different places and ways to win work?

Turkish and other European contractors as well as the Chinese have been forced leave their domestic markets when local work dries up. The Saudi Arabian contractors are now being forced to do the same thing.

There are approximately $11bn-worth of projects that have either been cancelled or put on hold in Saudi Arabia, many of them government schemes that have been shelved following calls from the government last year to halt contract awards and payments.

Turkish contractors and Spanish contractors in particular have been very active in the region. And if the Saudi market fails its local contractors, many of them may be forced to look for work elsewhere amid a region-wide slowdown.

The geographic mobility of Saudi contractors is often heavily dependent on GCC markets.

While other companies look at Iran as the biggest opportunity market, this is not an option for Saudi companies. Similarly central Asia is not a place for Saudi contractors with South Korean and other Asian companies’ establishing a strong presence in countries like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Saudi companies may find Egypt as the easiest and fastest-growing market to win work in. Saudi investment in Egypt is high and as a result contractors could find work in the North African country easy to win amid a shortage of Egyptian contractors able to manage the current pipeline.

In addition, contractors themselves may be forced to change their business model. Focusing on safe sectors such as utilities and energy is an option, while some have suggested a more specialist approach could work better than general contracting as real estate and construction work faces the biggest slowdown in Saudi Arabia.

Despite the importance of supporting some of the country’s biggest contractors, the complex process of private sector participation in government schemes, which is what the government is calling for, could mean that some of the kingdom’s largest public projects take a while to restart, meaning contractors may be forced to find a solution themselves.