Water. Desalination + reuse
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/983801
14 On Site June 2018 Water.desalination+reuse ENTRE- PRENEURIAL ENERGY • Fully open book integrated joint venture helps to spark innovative thinking • Joint venture will hand over operations to DEWA after a two- year warranty period • The first bid by Besix for the engineering, procurement and process design elements of a desalination project A joint venture of Belhasa Six Construct (Besix), and Acciona Agua won an AED 871 million ($237 million) desalination project from Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA). The contract covers a 40 million imperial gallons (MIGD) a day (182,000 m3/d) seawater reverse osmosis desalination plant and associated facilities, including intake, outfall, pre-treatment and a two-pass reverse osmosis system. The date for commissioning is May 2020, and the joint venture will operate the plant for a two-year warranty period. The contract win is significant for Besix Concessions & Assets, Jebel Ali project is a new direction for DEWA and for Besix The $237 million contract awarded by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) for a seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant represents a big step for the client, and for Besix Concessions & Assets, which won the work in partnership with Acciona Agua. For DEWA, the project is a decisive step on the road to building up its capacity in reverse osmosis desalination, as part of an ambitious strategy to reduce reliance on thermal desalination during the coming decades, to improve efficiency, cut costs, and reduce carbon emissions. Meanwhile for Besix Concessions & Assets — one of three business units within Besix Group, which also comprises the Besix Contracting construction business, and property developer Besix Real Estate — the contract win is a vindication of its strategy to enter the market for design and build in desalination. This was the first competitive tender in the market that the company had entered, including sharing full process-related risk. Besix Concessions & Assets invests in projects, and in designing, building, financing, operating and owning them, for a concessionary period, either on its own or with a commercial partner or private sector organisation such as DEWA. The size of this new project, worth around a quarter of a billion dollars, also makes it significant for Besix Group, whose entire turnover is about $3 billion a year globally. About 40 per cent of this comes from the Middle East. because it is the first time that the company has bid for the engineering, procurement and process design elements of a desalination project. The company has a long history of working in the Middle East, particularly as a marine contractor, and has a fleet of hundreds of barges, dredgers and other vessels, all designed, built and owned in-house. It has constructed very many of the seawater intake and outfall structures, plus the related pumping stations and civil environments, for the seawater desalination and power plants that are dotted around the Gulf. "We may be one of the top five water contractors in the world, but what we have been lacking is the process side, we basically stopped at the civil and marine work, but we could not do the engineering and procurement and process design," says Rolf Keil, project development manager, Besix Concessions & Assets. "A couple of years ago the company had a vision to develop and grow for the future, especially taking into view the upcoming public-private partnership (PPP) model that is being employed across the region. This vision is what Concessions & Assets has developed into a reality, and that is what I was hired to lead." Rooted in the region Besix Group certainly has strong roots in the region, in some cases working with sponsor families with relationships reaching into the second and even third generations. It has built some of the most ambitious projects in the region, too, including the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, Dubai Water Canal, the Emirates Palace hotel, Abu Dhabi, and in the 1960s, Sultan Qaboos Port, in Muscat, Oman. At about a quarter of a million dollars, the investment is sizeable for a group whose entire revenue is around $3 billion. And the nature of the model employed by Besix and Acciona — an integrated, open book joint venture — is also a significant step. "Because each side opens their books to the other. We know exactly how much one pays for a kilo of concrete, and the other knows exactly for how much to buy the pumps, and we can challenge one another about what is the best optimised process. It's not like two entities working separately and then each pops up with a price. We are working together in the same office, same teams, fully open book. It's a fantastic experience, and one of the first times that this has been done here at Besix," explains Keil, adding that the joint venture has instilled an entrepreneurial energy in the project that is helping to drive innovation and efficiencies. In particular, it cuts out the potential fat of adding contingencies that are o¢en put into a project to allow for unknowns or pitfalls that may occur due to lack of detailed knowledge about a partner's approach. "If we can sit together and challenge what would be the best idea how to do it, then I have a very close and sharp knowledge of what I really need to do, and I can be much more competitive and more accurate to reality," he says. SITE AND DESIGN • Project is better described as greenfield than brownfield • Design-led engineering reimagines buildings over one storey, rather than two storeys The project has been billed as a brownfield scheme because it is in the middle of an industrial zone; in fact, it would more accurately be described as greenfield, because the allotted site is vacant and has no existing assets that require demolition, modification, or integration. The site is an unusual U-shape, and is surrounded by lots filled by industrial operators and their associated infrastructure, We are working together in the same office, same teams, fully open book. It's a fantastic experience. Rolf Keil, project development manager, Besix Concessions & Assets