Commercial Management for Riyadh Giga Projects, A Practical Guide

Riyadh's giga projects are unlike any construction environment Saudi contractors have worked in before. Programmes like Diriyah Gate, New Murabba, King Salman Park and the Roshn pipeline are running 5-10x the variation density of conventional building work, on accelerated design-build delivery, against bespoke contract forms that modify standard FIDIC clauses in ways that materially shift risk.

Commercial management functions designed for traditional KSA contracting simply break under this load. This guide outlines the framework Nahl ALMaha applies on giga-project assignments.

The scale of giga projects

A single building package on a Riyadh giga programme can exceed SAR 1.5 billion. Across a programme there can be 80-200 such packages running in parallel, sharing infrastructure, utilities and access corridors. The commercial team is dealing with:

• Hundreds of open RFIs and EWNs simultaneously.
• Variation order rates of 30-80 per month per package.
• Monthly applications running into hundreds of millions of riyals.
• Multiple tiers of consultant approvals before any commercial event closes.

Commercial risks unique to giga projects

Bespoke contract amendments

Most giga-project contracts start from FIDIC but are heavily amended in the Particular Conditions. Common amendments to watch: extended notice periods becoming condition precedent, capping of head office overhead recovery, removal of contractor termination rights, and one-sided variation valuation rules. Every amendment must be mapped to its commercial impact before site mobilisation.

Interface risk between packages

When Package A's contractor is delayed, Package B's contractor inherits the delay even though the cause sits with another contractor. The commercial team must establish at award how interface delays will be notified, recorded and recovered, usually through a separate interface protocol, not the main contract.

Accelerated design-build

Design is being issued in tranches while construction proceeds. Rev jumps of 5-10 revisions per drawing in the first 6 months are normal. The commercial impact: continuous BOQ reconciliation, near-continuous variations, and a heavy reliance on the 28-day notice regime to preserve entitlement on each design change.

Variation management

On a giga-project package, variation management is a full-time discipline, not a part-time task for the project QS. The framework we deploy:

1. Variation register, every potential variation logged the day it is identified, with status (pre-quote / quoted / instructed / valued / paid).
2. Time impact pre-assessment, every variation gets a programme impact note before pricing, so cumulative time impact is visible from week one.
3. Cumulative impact log, monthly snapshot of cumulative time and resource impact across all variations, used to support a global or composite EOT claim if needed.
4. Pricing methodology lock, agree at award which method (BOQ rates / pro-rata BOQ / star rates / cost+fee) applies to which type of variation, to avoid case-by-case disputes.

Claims environment

Claims on Saudi giga projects are settled in three forums: the Engineer's determination, the Dispute Avoidance/Adjudication Board (DAB), and ultimately Saudi commercial courts (or arbitration under the SCCA rules where elected). The commercial strategy must build the evidential chain for all three from day one, contemporary records under Sub-Clause 20.2.4, programme impact analysis, and quantum substantiation.

Get the commercial management framework right at mobilisation and you protect the contract margin. Leave it to "we'll catch up at final account" and the variations will swallow it. Read our related insight on FIDIC notice deadlines to see how this connects to the entitlement regime.