Contract award
Alkhorayef Water signs Al Khobar networks maintenance contract
By Staff Writer | 16 August 2026
Alkhorayef Water and Power Technologies has signed a SAR 101.3 million contract with National Water Company to operate and maintain the water and wastewater networks of Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.
The signing was announced in the company's filing to the Saudi Exchange on 12 August 2026. The contract runs for three years and covers the operation and maintenance of the water and wastewater networks serving Al Khobar. The company states that the financial impact of the contract is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026.
The value is stated exactly as filed: SAR 101.3 million over a three year term. The announcement is a signing, not a new award, and no separate award value has been added to it here.
National Water Company let the contract as part of its programme for the performance and reliability of its networks. Alkhorayef Water and Power Technologies is a Saudi company listed on the Saudi Exchange, and its filing is the primary record of the deal; the company issued no accompanying statement from a named officer, so none is quoted here.
What the practitioner should take from this
A three year operation and maintenance contract for a city's networks is a different commercial animal from a construction award, and the risks that matter sit in different places.
The first question on any network O&M contract is the condition of the asset at the start. The contractor prices the maintenance of a system whose true state is only partly knowable at tender, and the contract allocates that uncertainty. The provisions that decide it are the condition survey obligations, any reliance permitted on employer data, and the line between planned maintenance, reactive repair and capital replacement. A contractor that treats a corroded main as the employer's capital problem, against an employer that reads the same main as routine maintenance, is the standard dispute on these terms, and it is decided by the definitions agreed at signature.
The second is the payment and performance mechanism over a long term. O&M contracts commonly pay a periodic sum against availability or service levels, adjusted by deductions. The practical points are the measurement method, who records the data the deductions are calculated from, and how indexation deals with cost movement across three years. A contractor whose deduction data is generated solely by the employer's systems should secure audit rights on day one.
The third is the position at expiry. A network O&M contract ends with a handback standard, and the survey at handback is where the opening condition question returns. The contractor that recorded the network's state at commencement holds the baseline; the one that did not will find the handback standard measured against an assumption.
No dispute has been reported in connection with this contract. The points above are the ordinary anatomy of a term operation and maintenance contract for municipal networks, and each is settled by the drafting rather than by later argument.