“For the Air Products team members involved to complete this project with the extensive worker hours required, facing varied challenges, and to do so without a lost time injury is a truly exceptional milestone. It speaks of the dedication to safety, and extreme focus on the task to be completed. The confirmation of our success was the agreement of the customer that we had reached the mechanical completion stage of the construction project. Going forward, when a prospective customer is interested in Air Products’ expertise, we can point to a map and say, let me tell you what we accomplished at Jazan,” said Dr. Samir J Serhan, executive vice president at Air Products.
In April 2015, Air Products announced it had been awarded a 20-year contract by Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest company, under a joint venture (JV) of Air Products (25%) and ACWA Holding (75%) to build, own and operate the world’s largest industrial gas complex to supply 75,000 metric tons per day (20,000 oxygen and 55,000 nitrogen) to Saudi Aramco’s refinery and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle being built in Jazan, Saudi Arabia.
The Jazan Project was executed by Air Products’ major execution centers in the United Kingdom, United States, China and India with active engagement of employees in Saudi Arabia. The now mechanically complete industrial gas complex is expected to be brought onstream in phases in 2019.
“Overall it took approximately three years to engineer, procure and construct the world’s largest industrial gas facility. The project is significantly larger than anything executed by Air Products to date, and the global company engineering effort speaks to our engineering capabilities and expertise. On top of that, there was the massive recruitment effort to bring the construction workforce and others to the location, train them, and have them understand our focus on safety. The construction success and safety results all speak to the execution by our team,” said Dr. Serhan.
The Jazan project effort required the hiring of new sub-contractors for almost all of the construction scope. At peak construction periods, a workforce of 6,000 people were at the site. The result was a multi-national team of people from over 30 countries filling the varied roles necessary for the construction project.