Contract award

Rowad Modern Engineering takes Al Haer treatment plant civil works

By Staff Writer  |  16 August 2026

Rowad Modern Engineering has been awarded the execution contract for the civil works at the Al Haer sewage treatment plant south of Riyadh, a 200,000 cubic metre a day facility the company describes as one of Saudi Arabia's major water infrastructure projects.

The award was announced by the company on 13 August 2026. The plant sits approximately 45 kilometres south of Riyadh, near Wadi Hanifa, and spans an area of nearly 500,000 square metres. Its treatment capacity of 200,000 cubic metres per day is intended to support existing and future residential communities and, in the company's words, to address increasing environmental and municipal service needs and to make the wastewater treatment system more efficient.

Rowad Modern Engineering's scope covers the delivery of the plant's civil works, described as the construction activities and coordinated execution requirements essential to completion of the facility. The company says the wider project is progressing according to a coordinated delivery plan, and that its own works must be aligned with the plant's technical and operational requirements.

The plant uses NEREDA treatment technology, and the project won the water treatment category of an international utility deal award earlier this year. No contract value has been published for the civil works package, and none is stated here.

Al Haer Sewage Treatment Plant represents an important addition to Rowad Modern Engineering's track record in delivering vital infrastructure projects across the Gulf region. Our role in this project reflects our ability to deliver complex works within strategic developments, while maintaining the highest standards of quality, safety, and execution excellence.

Mohamed Mahlab, Chief Executive Officer, Rowad Modern Engineering

This project reflects the Saudi market's growing confidence in ROWAD Modern Engineering's capabilities and represents an important step in strengthening our presence in one of the region's fastest-growing infrastructure markets.

Eng. Yasser El-Saadany, Commercial Director, Rowad Modern Engineering

Rowad Modern Engineering is a subsidiary of ElSewedy Electric Group and brings more than 25 years of experience across the Egyptian, regional and African markets. The company states that it has expanded across Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Libya and several African countries, and its projects include the Rabigh Power Plant in Saudi Arabia, the Tahya Misr 1 Container Terminal at Damietta Port and the Benban Solar Park in Aswan.

What the practitioner should take from this

A civil works package let within a live, coordinated delivery plan is one of the most interface-heavy positions a contractor can take, and the commercial questions it raises are worth setting out.

The first is the boundary of the package. Where the civil works must be aligned with the technical and operational requirements of a treatment process supplied by others, the contractor's programme depends on design information, tolerances and hold points that sit outside its own contract. The documents that matter are the interface schedule and the information release programme. Where those are absent or loose, a civils contractor carries delay risk it cannot manage, because the event that stops its work arises in a contract it cannot see. The time to fix the boundary is at tender, in the scope and programme documents, not in correspondence after the first clash.

The second is the effect of a process performance target on a civils scope. A plant of this kind is ultimately tested against a measured treatment standard, but a civil works contractor does not warrant the process. The careful position is a scope that defines the civils obligation by reference to drawings, specifications and tolerances rather than to the performance of the completed plant, with any fitness-type language confined to the party that designed and supplied the process. Where that separation is blurred, a civils contractor can find itself defending a shortfall it had no means to cause or to cure.

The third is progress records on a multi-party site. Where several packages proceed in parallel under a coordinated plan, the contemporaneous record of access, possession and completion of each work front decides most later arguments. A contractor that signs a coordination plan without recording the state of each interface at handover has surrendered the evidence it will later need.

No dispute has been reported on this project. The points above are the ordinary anatomy of a package contract inside a coordinated delivery plan, and they are settled by the documents agreed at the start, not by the arguments run at the end.