Special Report Contents

• Qatar: Facing a gas export crunch

• Doha needs measured spending

• Buildout brings price pressures for Qatar

• Qatar faces a future of cheaper gas

• Qatar Exchange struggles to capitalise on emerging markets boost

By the time the Fifa World Cup 2022 closes on its new date of 18 December, some 3.8 million tourists will have visited Qatar during the year, more than double the 1.6 million who head to the country today.

A significant number will have been tourists there to support their country during the World Cup. Others will have been in Qatar through the year for business or leisure. Half will have arrived for other GCC states, the rest from outside the region.

The ongoing construction across all sectors in Qatar to accommodate the influx is daunting.

Stadiums, the largest of them designed to accommodate 80,000 people, are either being built or are in the latter planning phases.

The Hamad International airport, which opened six years later than originally planned in mid-2014, is to undergo an expansion estimated to cost around $8bn. It will increase the airport’s capacity to 53 million passengers a year, up from 30 million passengers.

Hotels with a collective capacity of 50,000 rooms are planned or under construction, a $35bn integrated rail project is under way, and so are road projects worth some $20bn.

Intermodal integration

Qatar’s rail programme entails the construction of at least 109 stations and the laying down of 687-kilometres of rail track.

The Public Works Ministry (Ashghal) is upgrading or building 1,000-km of roads, along with approximately 240 major interchanges and 360 bridges.

The new airport, which occupies a land area equivalent to one-third of Doha, will also get a new link to the Doha Metro red line.

Plus car ownership in Qatar is one of the highest in the world, at 532 per 1,000 head of population. The number of cars on the road is expected to grow by up to 15 per cent annually.

Hundreds of consultants, contractors and sub-contractors are working on tonnes of engineering designs and drawings, with room for multiple revisions and adjustments during the execution phase due to factors ranging from budget to timeline or client requests.

However, the major build and design rush should not sidestep the most crucial feature of these projects, which is to deliver positive user experience.

“Those who attend the Fifa World Cup will not go home and tell their friends about the new and well-designed viaducts or new roads in Qatar,” explains Jonathan Spear, Atkins’ technical director for Strategic Transport Planning.

“Rather, they will tell their friends that the transport system was efficient, that it was easy to find your way around the city or that the metro and the buses arrived on time.”

A Central Planning Office (CPO) has been established by Atkins under government directives to coordinate current and planned road, rail, metro and other major transport infrastructure projects.

Spear, who spent over a year with the CPO, said there are plenty of good technologies and excellent ideas for each segment of the Qatar transport infrastructure programme.

“One of the key issues going forward would be deciding on which of these ideas and technologies are realistically implementable for the programmes on the ground,” Spear tells MEED.

Eventually the focus will shift from civil engineering to user experience.

By then the challenge would be translating these ideas – whether its automated ticketing systems or central command centres - into products or services that suit user needs.

“Users won’t be looking for a big metro, what they will require is information to guide them as they go around the city,” explains Spear.

Intelligent system

Ashghal began prequalifying interested consultants for an ambitious all-encompassing intelligent transportation system (ITS) in July 2013.

The consultants specified 13 technology tracks, which range from traffic detection monitoring system to tolling and payment collection.

One of the systems implemented by Ashghal in line with its ITS strategy is a traffic control room, which monitors all the traffic signals and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras across the country.

Qatar Rail has planned for integration with other transport modes, backed by technology implementation that will ease traffic flow through its services.

There are also plans for the Doha Metro to adopt a unified, contactless ticketing and payment system, where the same tickets could be used for the metro, trains, buses, taxis and parking spaces.

In addition to applications such as ticketing systems, the metro will be equipped with Wi-Fi connectivity and there will be a range of mobile applications to “enhance customer experience”.

These apps could include real-time services such as expected arrival and departure times of metro trains.

Expertise wanted

The shift in focus from civil engineering to customer experience will be accompanied by a shift in human resource requirements.

This is an area that consultants and analysts agree Qatar will probably want to focus on amid the ongoing design and build rush.

With scarce IT resources on the ground, it is essential for the various stakeholders to plan ahead, so that they can import or develop in-house the required skills in time for the implementation of these systems.

New technologies

Another issue that Qatar needs to plan for is the intrinsic high obsolescence of technologies. Newer technologies will likely come along during the four-year window prior to the operation of the first phase of the Doha Metro and long-distance rail.

The time gap widens further when taking into account the completion dates for the remaining phases of the various projects.

While there is the temptation to buy the most advanced technologies to protect against obsolescence due to newer technologies, a more circumspect approach might be preferred.

“Newer, more expensive solutions are usually more risky so acquiring a tested and more mature solution at a lower price point would probably make better economic sense,” explains Spear.

There also needs to be multi-agency collaboration between Ashghal, Qatar Rail and the Ministry of Interior (MoI). But that collaboration needs to additionally include a standards committee, such as the General Organization for Standards and Metrology.

This approach ensures there is standards compliance and that each agency’s technology can be tightly integrated.

Regulatory framework

The development of new technologies will almost certainly require updating the country’s transport regulatory framework.

For example, driverless cars could have moved from proof of concept to production during this period. “Will traffic law be updated to allow driverless cars in Qatar? How much will they allow the current law to be changed to accommodate these types of cars?” asks Spear.