News Archive
Hill to boost headcount in booming Libya
Released on 13/03/2009
US-based consultant Hill International has said it plans to move up to 40 extra staff to Libya to work on projects it has won in the booming market there.
William Brubaker, Hill International’s senior vice president and North Africa regional manager, told iCON the company would this month increase its existing complement of 108 staff in Libya by “30 to 40” and that they would come from a range of disciplines.
A claims and project consultancy with global reach, Hill International has had some success in capturing a share of the billions of oil dollars Libya is anxious to spend upgrading its neglected infrastructure and housing stock and developing its tourism offering.
Last year Hill won around US$42 million of project management and consulting work on the US$2 billion expansion of Al Fateh University in Tripoli. Also in the burgeoning education sector, it last year won a US$11.5-million contract providing pre-construction and design management for a huge scheme to build 27 new university campuses across the country.
With Dubai in the doldrums, Libya is seen as the next construction hotspot. Since abandoning its costly weapons of mass destruction programme in 2003 the former sworn enemy of the West has begun to divert its considerable oil wealth to upgrading its dilapidated housing stock, building education facilities, developing the Mediterranean’s last undeveloped stretch of coastline, and updating its roads, ports and airports.
The amount Libya wants to spend reaches into the many tens of billions of dollars, according to Libya expert Oliver Miles, Deputy Chairman of the Libyan British Business Council and former British ambassador to the north African state. Reliable government figures are scarce but he told iCON that he has seen government investment targets for the period to 2015 of US$13bn for housing, $14.6bn for tourism, $7bn for sewerage and $6.2bn for roads.
Miles said high-level government officials have scolded British firms in particular for showing a lack of interest in the market.
Libya’s main European trading partner is Italy, its colonial occupier between 1911 and 1943. Earlier this year Italy pledged US$5bn in compensation to Libya for acts of brutality committed during its occupation. Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi went to Tripoli on 2nd March to sign the deal with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Italy will give Libya $200m a year over 25 years in the form of investments in infrastructure projects. Italian construction companies are likely to win a lot of that work.
Turkish construction firms have a substantial presence in Libya.
China, which has cultivated diplomatic relations with Gadhafi since 1978, has 13 companies working as general contractors building mainly residential units, according to the CIOB’s representative in Libya, Liu Mengjiao. She said these housing contracts have a total value of around US$8.8 billion, and all were signed in 2008.
Hill International is also involved in a major, high-rise, mixed-use development with its strategic partner Al Maabar International Investments, an Abu Dhabi joint venture of developer heavyweights Aldar Properties, Sorouh, Reem Investments, Al Qudra Holdings and Reem International.
Hill is also involved in masterplanning a major tourism development along Libya’s undeveloped Mediterranean coast.
(Watch for the full report on the risks and opportunities in Libya’s construction market, to appear in the Quarter 2, 2009 edition of iCON.)
