Thursday, Oct 30, 2008
Gulf News
Dubai: The $160 billion in projects either underway or planned in Dubai could be in jeopardy if adequate skilled labour is not found soon, industry experts say.
As developers and consultancies struggle under the responsibility of completing 3,400 projects in the Gulf on time, worth in excess of $2.4 trillion, the lack of a skilled labour force remains a pressing issue.
"The lack of skilled labour is creating bottlenecks," said Riad Bsaibes, chief operating officer of Amana Contracting and Steel Buildings Company.
Earlier this year, database Proleads estimated the total number of active projects underway in the Gulf, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, as close to 3,400. Their combined value is an astronomical $2.4 trillion.
Civil engineering and infrastructure projects lead the way with 2,081 projects. These alone have a total value of $1.3 trillion.
Dubai, the leader in the region in terms of construction and project dev-elopment, has projects underway worth around $160 billion.
Vital element
With this scale of construction, attracting and training an adequately skilled labour force is a vital element in ensuring a successful future for Dubai.
"Too many projects were released on to the market too quickly and now many contractors have a backlog," Bsaibes said.
For example, Arabtec currently has a backlog of projects worth around $10 billion and a construction workforce of of 52,000 people.
"And we're still short of people," said Riad Kamal, chief executive of Arabtec.
"There is definitely a labour shortage because of the increased volume of projects coming on to the market," Kamal said.
With reference to the current global credit crunch, Kamal said this region has not been affected.
"It hit the rest of the world, but hasn't hit us. Most developers embarked on projects they pre-paid or have financing for already," Kamal added.
There are currently over 160 construction projects in the UAE that are currently delayed because of a labour shortage, Gulf News recently reported.
The civil construction projects underway include residential, retail, commercial, health and education and also civil infrastructure including roads, bridges, ports, railways, airports and canals.
"You can order steel and cement, but you can't easily bring manpower and train them," Bsaibes said.
Engineers
The severe shortage of civil engineers today, when the Gulf countries most need them, springs from a lack of interest in the field more than a decade ago.
"In the nineties, the construction sector was weak, not just in this region, but all over the world. So the number of people graduating from universities in civil engineering was low," Bsaibes explained.
Dubai is planning to accommodate 10 million tourists a year by 2012. Compounded with an anticipated population of four million by 2020, Dubai is in a race with itself to get all the work done.
In the hotel sector alone, the current 60,000 rooms available is expected to triple to 180,000 rooms by 2015 to accommodate the surge in tourists.
However, high concrete and steel prices, coupled with the lack of labour, mean developers are already being squeezed and so project delays are increasingly common.
"Industry leaders in the Middle East cannot simply 'buy in' the expertise they need.
"To sustain the current level of development, talent must be produced from within, through training and development programmes," said Raed Haddad, senior vice president of corporate programmes at business analysis provider, ESI International.
Gulf News 2008. All rights reserved.
