IMI Critical Infrastructure Advisory, Saudi Arabia

In 2024 UBIK advised International Maritime Industries (IMI), the Saudi Aramco affiliate developing the maritime yard at Ras Al-Khair in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, on the critical infrastructure that supports its operations.

The context

Large industrial groups bring their own engineering standards, their own contractors and their own way of deciding. They engage a consultant for judgement on a specific decision: whether a facility’s infrastructure matches the continuity its operation needs, whether a proposed design or a proposed vendor answers the requirement, and what it would take to close the difference. The work was advisory: UBIK reviewed and recommended, and did not design or build.

Scope

• Review of the critical infrastructure against the continuity requirement of the operation it supports: power, cooling and the facilities that house them.
• Assessment of proposed arrangements and vendor proposals against IMI’s standards and the relevant international standards.
• Recommendations ranked by consequence, with the decision each one informs.

What the work had to resolve

An industrial environment sets conditions a data center designer does not usually meet: heat, dust, corrosive atmospheres, process safety requirements and a maintenance regime that follows the plant’s turnarounds rather than the facility’s calendar. The infrastructure that supports the operation’s systems has to be designed and maintained for those conditions, and assessed against them rather than against the clean-room assumptions of a commercial facility.

The engagements’ content, findings and IMI’s information are not published.