Middle East Business
Riyadh based infrastructure director appointed for consultancy's Middle East transport business
By Staff Writer | 18 August 2026
WSP has appointed Dincer Mete as Director of Infrastructure, Middle East, based in Riyadh, placing a design interface and EPC delivery background at the head of its regional transport and infrastructure work.
The appointment was announced on 17 August and puts the directorship in Riyadh rather than in one of the coastal commercial centres. The role covers the delivery of the consultancy's transport and infrastructure portfolio across the region, together with client and stakeholder relationships and team building, and it takes in the programmes running inside Saudi Arabia itself.
Mete brings 25 years of work across infrastructure, transportation, engineering, construction and engineering, procurement and construction programmes, in Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The appointment is a return: he was at the same consultancy between 2012 and 2017, latterly in an infrastructure project management role in its Istanbul office.
It is a real pleasure to be returning to WSP. I look forward to working with colleagues, clients and partners across the Middle East to support the delivery of complex infrastructure programmes that contribute to the region's long-term development ambitions.
Dincer Mete, Director of Infrastructure, Middle East at WSP Middle East
A record built on interface management
Two entries in that record are worth reading closely, because both turn on the discipline that decides whether a fast tracked scheme holds its programme. On the Eurasia Tunnel, the double deck road tunnel beneath the Bosphorus connecting the European and Asian sides of Istanbul, he was Design Interface Manager. On the 1915 Canakkale suspension bridge, whose 2,023 metre main span is the longest of its type, he led engineering, procurement and construction design management and the design to construction interface through a fast track delivery.
Design interface management is where most delay and disruption claims on large civil schemes are either created or avoided. Late, incomplete or inconsistent design information passed between packages is the single most common root cause pleaded on fast track work, and it is usually pleaded long after the sequence that caused it has been overtaken.
Most recently he led a multidisciplinary engineering business unit of 170 people in Saudi Arabia, carrying responsibility for its performance and a portfolio of more than 35 projects.
What the appointment tells a contractor
Senior consultancy appointments are not neutral. Where a regional directorship sits, and what the holder has done before, tells a contractor something about how the consultant's teams will be organised and what they will press hardest on. An appointee whose background is design interface and delivery management on fast track schemes is likely to build his teams around programme control and information flow rather than around design production alone.
Dincer brings deep infrastructure experience, strong major programme delivery expertise and a proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams. His appointment strengthens our Transport & Infrastructure business across the Middle East, and we are delighted to welcome him back to WSP.
Alan Caldwell, Managing Director for Transport and Infrastructure at WSP Middle East
What to watch
The practical point for anyone tendering consultancy or contracting work in the region is the base. A directorship held in Riyadh, with the announcement made from Riyadh, points to where the workload is expected to sit. For a contractor already carrying design interface risk on a regional scheme, the question to ask at the next progress meeting is a simple one: who now owns the interface register, and on whose programme does it sit.