The group has grown through strategic acquisitions, continually enhancing its capabilities in areas with increasing demand, including investments in technology and sustainability in line with Vision 2030, Brian Dawes tells OGN

Applus+ has in recent years strategically expanded its service offerings through targeted acquisitions, strengthening its capabilities in environmental services, renewable energy, and green hydrogen.

The leading global provider of testing, inspection, and certification services, continues to drive innovation across various sectors.

In an exclusive interview with OGN energy magazine, Brian Dawes, Executive Vice-President of Applus+ Asia Middle East and Africa (AMEA), discusses the company’s next phase of growth, its long-term plans involve further investments in technology, facilities, and local talent, reinforcing its role as a key player in the region’s development.

He says the company is poised for success in Saudi Arabia, driven by the Kingdom’s substantial investment in various sectors.

Its growth has enabled the company to diversify its portfolio and establish a robust footprint in Saudi Arabia. Applus+ Middle East is headquartered in Riyadh, with offices across the Kingdom, and the region, including the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman.

Below are excerpts from the interview:

Can you please provide an overview of your company’s operations?

Applus+ is a global provider of testing, inspection, and certification services, headquartered in Spain. The company delivers high-value, tailor-made technical advisory, quality control, and supervision services. We enhance the performance and profitability of customers assets and facilities, minimise operational risks, and ensure process quality, while upholding environmental and social standards and regulations.

Our services in the Middle East cater to both public and private sector organisations across the oil and gas industry power and water utilities, transport, infrastructure, and a range of government organisations. We have offices throughout the GCC, with our regional headquarters located in Riyadh.

What are the new developments within your company and how has it helped you to position yourself in the market?

The Applus+ Group has grown through strategic acquisitions over its 30-year history, continually enhancing its capabilities in areas with increasing demand. Recent acquisitions include technologies in environmental services, leak detection, infrastructure, renewable energy, and green hydrogen.

Our business in Saudi Arabia is a microcosm of our global operations. Originally focused on oil and gas, our footprint now extends into the infrastructure, construction, power, water, renewables and mining sectors. This is supported by 14 materials testing laboratories across the Kingdom.

How has this year been so far for you and how do you see it progressing?

This year has been one of our best in the region, with Saudi Arabia being a significant driver of growth.

Given the scale of projects underway in Saudi Arabia and the region, what are the opportunities you see for yourself?

The extensive development of new field programmes, both onshore and offshore, presents significant opportunities for advanced pipeline inspection services.

Our proprietary TrekScan, IWEX, Rotoscan, and Rayscan technologies are well-suited to inspect girth welds and parent materials, providing superior quality inspection data for our clients.

Our 16-year partnership with Aramco recently extended for another 8 years, and that positions us to effectively support the region’s growing needs for reliable and innovative pipeline inspection solutions.

Saudi Arabia’s substantial investments in water supply and wastewater treatment management create opportunities for our advanced leak detection technology and survey and repair solutions.

Our environment team supplies, installs, commissions, and maintains environmental monitoring intelligent systems to measure different environmental parameters, such as water quality, temperature, pH, turbidity, conductivity, dissolved oxygen concentration, and the presence of contaminants. The increasing focus on road infrastructure offers prospects for our comprehensive road and highway management services.

Our capabilities include road analysis surveys, measurement and analysis of structural and functional parameters, road rehabilitation and pathology studies, quality control in new road construction, and the development of management systems for road networks and bridges.

Additionally, we provide airport pavement asset management surveys and consultancy, as well as research and development projects to drive innovation in this sector.

The expansion of power and renewable energy infrastructure in the region presents opportunities for our specialised services.

Our quality assurance and quality control, feasibility assessments, project design, development support, engineering, construction supervision, commissioning, and testing and inspection services are all in line with international and local codes and standards, aiding in the development and maintenance of power and renewable energy assets and supporting regional sustainability and energy objectives.

How does your company differentiate itself from competitors in the Saudi market and how have you integrated the aspects of Vision 2030 into your operations?

Our commitment to integrity sets us apart from many competitors. We approach every project with the highest standards of accuracy and independence, ensuring that our customers can rely on the data we provide. Additionally, the breadth of our service portfolio and the quality of our team distinguish us in the industry. Our long-established investment programme includes significant capital in equipment, laboratory facilities, and training for Saudi nationals, enabling us to meet the ambitious expectations of Vision 2030.

How is Applus+ partnering with Aramco to help boost the kingdom's energy stream?

Our engagement with Aramco extends beyond a traditional supplier-customer dynamic, allowing us to interact at multiple levels within the organisation, including senior management.

This facilitates strategic dialogues on various initiatives, such as the training and development programmes for young Saudis, which we have developed in collaboration with Aramco.

Our commitment to safety and integrity is central to our operations. We take great pride in maintaining the highest standards of safety.

With sustainability being a key focus, how do your company’s products and services help Saudi Arabia and the region further their green goals?

The Kingdom's Vision 2030 has significantly influenced operations at Applus+. One of the primary ways we've aligned with this vision is through strategic investments in acquiring companies with expertise in renewables and environmental services. These acquisitions have enabled us to expand our capabilities beyond traditional inspection services to include comprehensive consultancy and advisory services.

We support renewables projects from the conceptual design stage through to commissioning and operation. This end-to-end service provision ensures that we can contribute effectively to the Kingdom’s ambitious renewable energy goals.

Currently, we are engaged in multiple renewables projects across Saudi Arabia, demonstrating our commitment to sustainable development.

In addition to external services, we are heavily investing in defining and controlling greenhouse gas emissions within our own operations.

We have set ambitious sustainability goals to minimise our environmental footprint and promote greener practices throughout our organisation.

What are your long-term plans for expanding your business in Saudi Arabia and the region?

Our long-term plans include further significant investments in equipment, facilities, and people.

While we've had a presence in Saudi Arabia for many years, we are now entering a new phase of growth, driven by the increase in demand across all sectors. This includes providing specialist expertise, particularly in environmental and renewables services.

What are some of Applus+’s major achievements in the region?

We have secured several significant multi-year contracts with national oil companies (NOCs) for various critical services, including in-line inspection and electrical systems and power inspection.

These major contracts highlight the trust and reliance placed on us by key players in the region's oil and gas sector.

Applus+ provides consultancy services for several Saudi government organisations. In these projects, we deploy artificial intelligence (AI) technology to assist the government in managing its infrastructure and automating the monitoring and control of regulatory compliance.

While the details of these engagements are sensitive, they underscore our role in supporting national initiatives with advanced technological solutions.

In the last year, we have achieved recognition for our technical innovations and safety performance.

For instance, Saudi Aramco awarded our technical innovations at the Inspection Technology Roadshow. Safety remains a cornerstone of our operations. Our very high safety performance, the quality of our services, and our contributions to shutdown management have been recognised by our clients.

This year, our KSA team was awarded the HSE Excellence Award by the ASSP Gulf Cooperation Council, for our commitment to leadership, excellence, and exceptional performance in health, safety, and environment (HSE) within the Gulf Region's private sector.

We also celebrated significant milestones, such as our 25-year presence in the Middle East.

Furthermore, our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) programme includes a particular focus on encouraging women in engineering.

This is especially relevant in Saudi Arabia, where we are actively supporting initiatives to promote gender diversity in the engineering field.

We have infrastructure in place to support and foster the growth of female engineers, aligning with broader national goals for diversity and inclusion.

Considering technology is a major focus area for companies now, how are you employing technology to enhance operation and productivity?

In terms of our internal operations and productivity, we are rapidly moving towards automating the management of our resources.

We've invested significantly in internal systems in recent years, enhancing our efficiency and operational effectiveness.

One of the key technological advancements we are leveraging in our work on the King Fahad Causeway is the creation of digital twins.

Using unmanned technologies such as drones, advanced software, and AI, Applus+ conducts non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring, underwater inspections, pavement assessments, visual inspections, and drone surveys. These efforts culminate in the creation of a digital twin a virtual representation of an asset that captures intricate details and anomalies detected during inspections.

We offer services that enable our customers to digitise the visualisation of their assets and engineering drawings, creating digital twins.

These digital twins are smart engineering drawings that provide a virtual walk-around of assets, such as oil production platforms or gas processing units. Users can click on specific equipment items, like pumps or valves, to view detailed specifications, history, and condition.

This technology integrates seamlessly with the customer's engineering software.

Our proprietary NDT techniques, IWEX and Trekscan, are enhanced with integral software.

Our IWEX full-matrix capture technique minimises dependence on operator experience for accurate data analysis.

This technique can even provide three-dimensional visualisations of welds or joints, significantly improving inspection accuracy and speed.

The TrekScan inline inspection tool is another example. It generates vast quantities of inspection data in previously considered unpiggable pipelines and we are developing a machine learning-based process to automate data interpretation.

This makes the process much faster and more accurate than manual interpretation, ensuring a more reliable assessment of the pipeline's condition. The cloud solution associated with TrekScan is a refinement that enhances data storage and conveyance. The software's ability to automate interpretation is crucial, reducing the human element and associated errors.

This approach mirrors the advancements in medical radiology, where machine learning algorithms improve diagnostic accuracy and speed. We are currently working on a project that uses intelligent pigging with our proprietary tethered crawler, based on UT application, to ensure the integrity of jet fuel for a leading airport in Saudi Arabia.