Serco: Bolstering its presence in Saudi Arabia to align with Vision 2030

We are fortunate to have broad international and cross-sector reach that allows us to share best practice, expertise and innovation and continually improve our services. We have found success to date in asset management, emergency management and service design across giga projects, the aviation and defence sectors, focused on managing workforces, assets and data.

As Serco ups its presence in KSA, you have personally recently relocated from Dubai to KSA. What are some near future plans for Serco in KSA; and what is its long-term vision?

I moved to the UAE in 1991, and had been travelling to Saudi Arabia for the past five years however relocated recently as it is an extremely exciting time for Serco in the kingdom. As a public services company, we have a fantastic opportunity to support the government at a time where there is tremendous vision and such an ambitious and transformative journey towards 2030.

We have recently secured a number of new contracts and are focused on delivering on our commitments to our new customers. As part of that commitment, we are currently fitting out our new headquarters which will open in September.

Within the new office, we will expand our ExperienceLab business; the team has successfully transformed the research, design and delivery of assets and services across the region, and we plan to build on our human-centred design capabilities in the kingdom.

In the long-term, I expect Serco will be a significant player in the transformation of services across the aviation, defence and giga project sectors focused on managing workforces, assets and data.

What opportunities do you foresee for the private sector to support the Saudi government Vision 2030?

Saudisation is a core part of our regional strategy and we believe that the private sector has a duty to develop national talent to become the leaders of the future. Throughout Serco’s history, we have trained and developed local workforces to take over prior government jobs and as part of our ESG agenda we are socially driven to align the right talent to the right roles in Serco and provide Saudi nationals a breadth of work experiences.

We work to a train, transform, transfer model and a great example of this is the recent completion of our knowledge transfer programme as part of the Expenditure & Projects Efficiency Authority (Expro)’s kingdom-wide asset and facilities management transformation project.

Twenty-eight Saudi nationals were trained by Serco experts to be able to educate the different entities on the use of the newly developed National Manual for Assets & Facilities Management, mandated for use by all government sectors.

KSA has a spate of giga cities in the pipeline; how are public services going to transition to align with these projects?

Public services are already required during the major construction cycles of these projects. Serco is working with the giga projects in an advisory capacity to operationalise certain public service concepts during the design phase.

The projects are free from outdated and inefficient infrastructure that constrains other projects and our public services are oriented towards the future where we can design safe and vibrant services, harnessing the latest technologies and human-centred service design thinking.

How important is human-centred design?

We see great value to society in enhancing social outcomes by designing and delivering frontline public services that make a real difference to people’s lives. To enable this, our ExperienceLab improves citizen-centred service solutions across all our sectors, by bringing to life the human factor.

We deploy our ExperienceLab team as a mechanism for analysing, researching and leading on public service innovation which is extremely important for the future of public services in the kingdom.

During the construction and development phases of these giga cities, how important is integrated safety and emergency management?

The giga projects show the complete ambition the kingdom has to transform the economy and bring the beautiful landscape to the global stage. These are all major construction programmes and attention to the safety of all people and assets on-site should be first and foremost during the planning stages.

Integrated Emergency Management strategies and plans will provide and protect a safe operating environment at all the developments.

What are Serco’s future plans for KSA?

We will deliver on our promises to existing and new customers which will only enhance our position in the market. We are excited about the revival of the aviation sector and can draw upon our total airport services capabilities to support large airport and mobility transformation programmes in Saudi.

We will also focus on the giga projects as they start to phase in operational services where we can draw upon multi-sector capabilities and finally we will continue to support Vision 2030 through localising defence capabilities and providing more opportunities for Saudi nationals.