Lifting the Lid on Alderley’s Qatar Operations: Building a Strong Presence in One of the World’s Most Dynamic Energy Markets
From Nithin Jacob, Qatar Country Manager – Alderley
19 July 2021
Host country to the forthcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup, Qatar is a country rich in natural resources.
The country, situated on a peninsula in the Arabian Gulf, continues to extract and export oil and natural gas across the world and has the status of a World Bank High-Income economy with the third highest level of GDP per capita in the world.
The country has ambitious plans, Qatar’s National Vision 2030 aims to transform the nation into an “advanced society capable of achieving sustainable development” by the end of the decade and plans are underway to transition the country away from dependency on hydrocarbons.
Qatar has been a key market for Alderley for many years. In this short article we lift the lid on the company’s expanding presence in Qatar and examine the key ingredients to becoming a long-term partner to the country’s leading companies including Qatar Gas – the world’s largest liquified natural gas company.
Establishing a Local Presence and the Ingredients for Long-Term Success
The company’s success in-country is firmly based on key ingredients developed over several years, namely:
- Establishing local teams to solve local issues and making a long-term commitment to Qatar
- Providing clear lines of communication with our clients and getting as close as we can to them to understand their needs
- Building on Alderley’s reputation for tackling the most difficult challenges to demonstrate sector leadership
Taking these ‘ingredients’ in turn, localisation has been a key driver of success for Alderley in Qatar.
Being Local and Staying Agile
Starting local operations in the country in 2018 was a major step and enabled the company to demonstrate its remarkable agility by providing local engineering solutions as and when needed.
As is often true of other fast-growing economies, clients in Qatar demand a local footprint. Alderley responded to this. We have built our offer on the basis that by delivering time again for the client, it will facilitate client trust and they in-turn will seek the company’s support for future solutions.
As it puts down long roots in Qatar, Alderley is now looking to bring on local graduate engineers as part of the in-country team. By giving back to the country’s society and economy, we are extending our commitment to the country further. As Nithin Jacob, Country Manager for Qatar puts it: “We love doing business in Qatar.”
Simple lines of communication with clients
Our methodology for communicating with clients is to keep it personal and simple. We must be there when required 24/7. This means that we speak to our clients in Qatar as often as possible and do not just rely on email – we are in constant dialogue with clients. It means arranging face-to-face meetings where we collaborate on identifying key issues and seeking new solutions.
Alderley is well known in the oil & gas sector for metering, so we always play to our strengths, which includes building on our reputation as a company known as trustworthy and dependable. For this reason, we have developed key offers in new areas such as cybersecurity.
We do what we say we will do.
This means ensuring that there is no unplanned downtime for our clients when it comes to the solutions that we deliver and service.
Tackling the Most Difficult Issues – Cybersecurity and Adding Value across Qatar’s Energy Sector
Though Alderley is historically known as a metering solutions provider, cyber security is a major focus of the firm’s work in Qatar and an excellent example of how we have designed locally tailored made solutions to match local needs.
The country has some of the most rigorous global requirements on cyber security and we have recently coordinated a major project with a leading global energy player that integrated cyber security and metering system performance into a single solution. It involved as many as 24 systems in-country as part of that campaign and had never been done previously – the first independent domain control cyber security network to be installed by a metering system integrator in Qatar.
Capital projects such as providing chemical injection skids have come from having a strong presence on the ground in Qatar.
Alderley has a remarkably high number of its skids installed in the country, which the firm regularly services. Furthermore, we are on the long-term service framework for Qatar Gas – evidence of the firm’s sterling reputation for delivering world-class solutions.
Plans are underway for the company to bid for and work on the prestigious North Field gas expansion project – the largest of its kind in Qatar. This will involve developing at least 40 metering skids as well as accompanying chemical injections solutions and wellhead control panels.
Challenges
Alderley is ambitious in its work in Qatar – a key area of focus though is developing further the aftermarket services offer. This goes across the board for our solutions as Nithin Jacob, Country Manager for Qatar explains:
“I would like in future to be able to do everything in-country as some work we do is still completed by our UK-based business. To do this we will need to develop our pipeline of talent further in Qatar training local employees and putting them on the right training programmes such as cyber security and metering system design.”
COVID-19 has also brought challenges right across the GCC, but it’s clear that in terms of business the energy sector is recovering and is once again showing its resilience.
Yet, Alderley’s modus operandi for building a successful business in Qatar remains: Build trust from the client and the work will come.
