Setting up in Saudi

This interview was first published in the August 2024 issue of Middle East Consultant.

Stephen Topp, TBH Director and Country Manager for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, spoke to Middle East Consultant Magazine about the imperatives, challenges and opportunities of setting up a locally-based entity in Saudi.

Firstly, Stephen, what is the range of services TBH is offering in Saudi?

TBH is a specialist management consultancy, with nearly 60 years’ experience in the delivery of large, complex projects in the built environment, infrastructure, resources, and information technology sectors. Our core services include: strategic advisory, integrated project controls (time, cost, and risk), and claims and dispute resolution. We deliver these services across the entire project lifecycle from project initiation to handover and operations.

What are TBH’s ambitions in the KSA market, and indeed, what motivated you to set up there?

TBH has a long-term view towards the Saudi market. We see a strong pipeline of large, complex, impactful projects over the next 10+ years, to which we’re excited to make a meaningful contribution.

Since 2010, TBH has worked on a wide range of projects for our Saudi clients. Initially, these projects were managed from our international offices. Then, in 2021, we established our Saudi entity, with the vision of building a sustainable, long-term business. A major part of this vision includes developing local talent to drive the business in the future.

We see many benefits of setting up a local entity dedicated to serving the local market, including:

• Improved servicing of our clients and ability to deliver a client-centric approach.
• The ability to meet growing requirements for integrated teams, with consultants often being requested to be predominantly co-located in client offices.
• The ability to have dedicated resources specialising in the Saudi market, with a track record of delivering projects in the Kingdom and bringing that geographic specific experience to future roles.
• Greater participation in industry events, for example, the Construction Intel Summit KSA, at which we’ll have a speaker again this year.
• Improved staff welfare, eliminating a lot of travel and time away from home for staff that were previously travelling to support projects in Saudi.
• Cost benefits of reducing travel, and simplification of accounting and taxation when engaged through a local entity.
• It also provides the opportunity to develop local talent and build a sustainable business for the future.

In addition to our Riyadh-based team delivering day-to-day services, our Saudi clients are supported by the breadth of TBH, with our ability to ‘reach back into the business’ to supplement the locally based team with any specialist experience required.

Timing was another critical element in our decision to establish our Saudi entity. In addition to the favourable market conditions in Saudi, we had essential support from the greater business to increase our investment in the Middle East region, and the right senior leadership in place locally to undertake the establishment of a new entity, which is a challenging, involved process.

Tell us something about your own background, were you personally involved with Saudi before?

I had spent a relatively brief period in Riyadh, around four years prior to undertaking the establishment of our Saudi entity, so had a general expectation for what such an undertaking would require; however, I was very surprised with the amount of transformation that had occurred in Riyadh in the interim period.

In terms of my background, having previously worked for TBH in Perth and Melbourne, Australia, I undertook an MBA to further develop my business and leadership skill-sets. I was then looking for a new challenge, focused on the business development and operations side of consulting. An opportunity arose to relocate to the Middle East just over three years ago, with a mandate to establish our Saudi entity in Riyadh, supported by our Middle East partners.

It’s been a fantastic journey for both myself and the company.

Does the process of setting up a new presence in KSA involve a unique set of challenges?

There are always unique, location-specific challenges wherever you establish a business. Within the Saudi context, some of the challenges we encountered included:

• Unknowns in the entity establishment process, and difficulty in finding quality support in the form of the consultants that specialise in company establishment.
• Evolving regulatory requirements, though the local authorities usually do a good job of providing a leniency period allowing companies to get up to speed with new regulations.
• Hiring in a very competitive market, both in terms of local talent and expat specialists.
• There are also many unforeseen challenges that pop up throughout the establishment process. An example was the difficulty we had in finding an office fit-out contractor that was willing to take on a project of the scale of our initial office, due to the amount of work in the market from large organisations establishing their Saudi entities.

Did you set up in KSA with an existing raft of clients, or did you start from scratch and have to build these fresh relationships?

We’ve prioritised working with existing long-term clients, a combination of those that we’ve worked with in Saudi previously, and others that we’ve worked with across the region who have relocated to KSA in recent years. As we’ve grown our Riyadh office, we’ve extended our relationships and taken on new clients, but as an organisation we always prioritise existing relationships; and we’re proud that over 80% of our business is from repeat clients.

The Saudi giga-projects often involve unprecedented numbers of stakeholders: how is TBH equipped to deal with this?

Stakeholder Management is always a key consideration in the scale and complexity of projects TBH is involved with around the world. As you suggest, this is even more heightened in Saudi, and is a central part of my role across our largest engagements. It’s not only the number of stakeholders involved in these projects, but also the variety of stakeholders, and range of locations in which they are based, that makes it a unique challenge delivering these projects.

With the establishment of our Saudi entity, it has enabled most of our team involved in Saudi projects to be locally based, which is a big advantage. Having that local footprint is key in understanding the country-specific challenges, and the ability to liaise with clients and other locally-based stakeholders in person. We have also put emphasis on related skillsets when hiring for our Riyadh office, with stakeholder management being a critical consideration, particularly with senior staff, and strong communication skills being critical across the board.

Do you have Saudi locals – whether interns of executives – on your team, and what are your experiences of building their key skillsets?

We take our responsibility, in terms of Saudization regulations, very seriously and maintain a level well in excess of the regulatory requirements. We have a long-term outlook for our Saudi entity, and we are focused on recruiting Saudi Nationals who have recently graduated or are early in their careers. So, we are committed to developing this local talent with a view to those employees growing their careers with TBH and progressing right through to senior leadership positions.