Local contractor Saudi Oger will increase its labour force by 8,000 workers on Riyadh’s Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman University for Women in order to meet its completion deadline of January 2011.

Saudi Oger’s current workforce stands at 17,000 workers onsite, but sources close to the project say that number is poised to jump to 25,000 by the third quarter of this year. Construction on the three million square-metre (sq m) campus started in January 2009.

Oger’s current workforce stands at 17,000 workers onsite, but the number is poised to jump to 25,000

Source close the project

Saudi Oger was awarded the estimated SR12.5bn ($3.3bn) contract to build the first package of the university campus in February 2009 (MEED 24:2:09).

The first package is approximately 1 million sq m and includes administrative and classroom buildings for the following colleges:

• medicine
• dentistry
• pharmaceuticals
• nursing
• arts
• humanities
• family
• arts & design
• computer science
• information technology

The Saudi Oger portion of Princess Noura bint Abdulrahman University for Women also includes a 400-bed hospital, two administrative buildings, a conference and convention centre, a library, several mosques, 400 villas for married students and associated infrastructure.

The contractor is building the infrastructure, university and administrative buildings simultaneously. It is also in charge of landscaping the entire project. 

In mid-January 2009, Saudi Arabia’s Finance Ministry awarded three contracts worth more than SR30bn to build the university. Local contractors Saudi Binlandin and El-Seif Engineering & Contracting won the second and third packages. They were worth an estimated SR10bn and SR8bn respectively.  

Beirut-based Dar al-Handasah (Shair & Partners) is the consultant on the project.