RINA Consulting, a consulting engineering arm of the RINA Group, has won a consultancy contract to determine the general strategy for the development of three existing and one new port in Kuwait.
The contract, valued at €1,450,000, ($1,631,000) was placed by the Kuwaiti Port Authority this week and will be completed by end 2018. The plan will be an important element in the Kuwaiti governments overall development strategy and plan for the country’s future. RINA Consulting is already completing other assignments with the Kuwaiti Government in the port sector reaching an overall commitment of about €6.5 million ($7.3 million).
The Kuwaiti economy is still largely reliant on oil, but it is anticipated that there will be a quantum leap in economic development in the coming years. The government has identified the potential for an additional port and for efficiency improvements within the country’s current ports. It is envisaged that the plan when completed will become an important stepping stone in releasing the commercial potential of this important and strategically positioned country in the Middle East.
The contract which is the first secured by the newly named RINA Consulting, (formerly D’Appolonia), has a wide brief and was secured against aggressive international competition. RINA Consulting will be working in close cooperation with the Kuwaiti Port Authority, the Ministry of Public Works and the Kuwaiti government, to produce the plan that will determine the development strategy for Kuwaiti ports for the next 30 years, based on commercial market and traffic forecasts.
Leading the project is Manuela Sciutto, RINA Consulting Sector Manager for Port and Marine Facilities RINA Consulting. She said, “The starting point for this project is to conduct a feasibility study of the existing developments/projects at three of the existing ports. We will be conducting a 30-year traffic forecast to determine the impact on those existing projects, this will feed directly into a sustainable development plan which will also examine the organisational model of the Port Authority itself”. She went on to comment, “An important element of the plan is the identification of suitable sites for a potential fourth port in the southern part of the country.”
RINA Consulting will have a team of 20 consultants working on this project, covering infrastructure and economic development, market and traffic analysis, financial feasibility, logistics and transportation. But perhaps the most important element is managing the environmental impact of any future developments, in what is an ecologically sensitive area with a rich diversity of marine life. The RINA Consulting team will be located both in Kuwait and at RINA Consulting’s HQ in Genoa Italy.
