Abdulaziz Ali AlTurki Rawabi Holding Group Chairman and CEO

The art of integrated supply
Rawabi Group is a top-to-bottom engineering and services company that is setting industrial standards and raising the technological bar

Every year, hundreds of engineering students graduate from the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in Dhahran. The campus is situated on top of a geological dome where hydrocarbons were first discovered in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Not far away are the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the oil giant, which along with the highly diversified Rawabi Holding Company, leads many King Fahd academics to opt for the vast options available in all related fields of the industry.

From geophysicists and IT engineers to drilling foremen, Rawabi Holding Company is the outlet for today’s regional engineering talent. The formula is simple: a vertically integrated company that includes oil & gas, petrochemicals, telecommunications, fire proofing, power infrastructure, industrial support and international trade.

Young people can work at Rawabi Industrial Support Services as a non-destructive testing specialist (NDTS) or enter new fields, such as software development at Rawabi Telecom Company, or special roofing, water proofing, and thermal insulation at Abdulaziz Ali AlTurki & Partners for Contracting (ABACORP). For newly graduated engineers, Rawabi United Safety Services provides opportunities within its field of hydrogen sulphide safety supervision, gas detection system, and breathing equipment.

In engineering and construction, Rawabi Holding subsidiaries are involved in water networks, pumping stations and plants including pipeline construction capability. They are also involved in manufacturing various types of electrical substations, panel boards, control panels, and telecommunication shelters.

Major government-led projects in Saudi Arabia are slated to cost $629 billion over the next few years. Upgrades at Saudi Aramco alone are valued at $15 to $20 billion per year. With explosive growth in mind, Rawabi Holding Company has opened training institutes to hire foreign workers. It is a short-term solution, but one that will allow Saudi Arabia to manage its second development thrust. “It’s not the money that makes a company, but the people. That’s the only way to achieve excellence in the long run,” says Abdulaziz Ali AlTurki, the Group Chairman and CEO. With each development cycle, there are new needs requiring a pliant services network. “Today, Saudi Arabia is a virgin country. Wherever you go, you find business opportunities,” he says.

In the 1980s, Mr AlTurki worked alongside his elder brother. He later partnered with other siblings to launch engineering projects. Today, he is the proud owner of a company that claims to have the roadmap to the Kingdom’s energy sector. Eastern Province, after all, is home to a quarter of the world’s entire oil reserve.

Rawabi Trading and Contracting (RTC), the flagship enterprise, was established in 1980. It acts as a purveyor of chemicals, cabling, tubing and mechanical equipment to the domestic oil sector and installs drilling units and pipelines for upstream operations. Mud engineering, like water handling, is a serious task in the lifting of oil crude. For AlTurki, it makes perfect sense to run in tandem with global energy demand – Rawabi Holding Company has a reputation for making things happen. Cathodic protection technology is part of the extensive list of activities that the company is engaged in, while AlTurki makes special mention of his Corrosion Services Company as an industry leader in the field.

“We started the diversification process seven years ago. In an economy like Saudi Arabia’s, you cannot depend only on oil and gas. You need to have other activities to keep the company, and its people, afloat,” says Mr AlTurki. Another vivid example of diversifying its activities, Rawabi Holding has become a key food supplier in the Saudi market.

Rawabi Holding owes much of its success to the way it acquires technology and rapidly incorporates it into its in-house training programmes. As an example, Mr AlTurki points to Paris-based Geoservices, the worldwide leaders in mud-logging services who have integrated with Rawabi Holding Company to take up the challenges posed by this facet of the business.