New jobs in £6m Middle East deals
Apr 10 2008 By Karen McLaughlan, Evening Gazette
A TEES Valley engineering company has launched a recruitment drive after clinching a trio of multi-million pound contracts in the Middle East.
K Home International, of Thornaby has secured more than £6m of work with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which will see it project manage three major development schemes during the next two years.
Trevor Arnold, managing director of K Home International, said the firm was now looking for 40 new staff on the back of the contract wins.
K Home has seen a rapid growth in work in the Middle East in recent years and now employs about 100 staff in Dubai.
“There is so much development work going on in Abu Dhabi,” said Mr Arnold.
“While there’s massive amounts of work under way in Dubai, Abu Dhabi is going to eclipse Dubai.”
K Home is to project manage the development of an 800-bed hospital in Ruwais, a town outside Abu Dhabi, and administration buildings and a research centre in Takreer - which is halfway between Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
It is also working on a scheme at Das Island, situated 80 miles of the coast of Abu Dhabi, which includes a police station and coastguard building.
The company is now looking for project managers, construction managers, engineers and quantity surveyors to work on the projects, which represent £200m of investment by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Mr Arnold said: “These are our first major projects in Abu Dhabi and we’ll be looking to set up an office there. But it is difficult to find staff and we need to find 40 people as soon as possible. So we want people to get in touch.”
Already this year K Home has been named project manager of the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre - a $2.5bn development in the city’s centre - and has designed and developed a pipework system to deliver chilled water cooling systems to thousands of homes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Meanwhile the Middle East’s booming construction industry is helping a local shower manufacturer to establish a recognised brand in the Middle East.
Newton Aycliffe-based Roman has won a contract worth more than £50,000 to supply more than 200 shower enclosures and trays to a hotel in Saudi Arabia.
Roman’s export manager, Gillian Richardson, said: “The rate of build within the Middle East, both in terms of hotel projects and residential development, means it is an attractive market.”
During the past 12 months, the company has expanded its export division by 164% and is already operating in Canada, North America, Malta, Qatar and several European countries. It is in “late negotiation stages” for other contracts in the United Arab Emirates and the burgeoning Russian market.
