STORY OF FAST CONSORTIUM
A partnership between seven companies

4 MAY 2018: FAST Consortium was created in 2013 as a partnership between seven companies, all successful in their bid to be one of the design and build (DB) contractors involved in the Riyadh Metro project.

The companies are FCC Construccion (Spain), Samsung C&T (South Korea), Strukton (Netherlands), Alstom (France), Setec (France), Atkins (UK) and Typsa (Spain). Local construction company, Freyssinet, also joined the consortium as the Saudi partner.

Together, their company names create the consortium acronym, FAST, and the partnership is represented in the logo of seven ‘rail tracks’ all merging into one point: F (FCC,), A (Alstom, Atkins), S (Samsung, Strukton, Setec), T (Typsa).

The agreed budget for the total scope of work was agreed with the client at $7.891 billion, with the percentage share being agreed among the five main companies, and their sub-contractors, through a consortium commercial agreement.

Scope and Organisation

FAST was awarded DB responsibility for three of the six lines of the project: Line 4 (Yellow), Line 5 (Green), and Line 6 (Purple), with a combined length of 64 km. Within the scope of the three lines were also two maintenance depots, serving Lines 4/6 and Line 5, 26 stations, 69 driverless trains, three park and ride facilities, 36 traction power stations and two operation control centres, as well as numerous supporting projects such as a technology transfer program, training of future operation and maintenance teams, establishment of a training centre, a program of environmental awareness and, above all, a comprehensive and pro-active campaign of health and safety.

At the time of writing, FAST has just celebrated more than 21 million safe man hours without lost time incident (LTI), considered an incredible achievement on such a complex and challenging hyper-project. The Consortium has also recycled more than 2,000 tonnes of scrap wood, plastic, metal and hazardous matter, and is reusing between 65 and 85% of all material excavated.

The contract started on 30 October 2013, when the combined manpower on the consortium was only 69 people. At its peak, in 2017, it rose to more than 15,000, but in the early days the work was focused on design and agreeing the alignment with any number of stakeholders, specifically: the Riyadh Municipality, National Grid and National Water Company for access to all existing utilities, Traffic Police for permission to create traffic diversions on major road arteries, neighbouring shopkeepers, residential owners and the Airport Authorities, to name but a few.

For the first year of the project, FAST had its headquarters in a rented office block on King Abdulaziz Road, where overall Project Director, Jaime Freyre de Andrade Calonges, presided over the establishment of three entities to manage the works: a Civil Works Joint Venture (CJV) between FCC, Samsung, Strukton and Freyssinet; a Tracks Joint Venture (TJV) between Alstom and CJV; and a Transit Systems (TSY) entity managed by Alstom.