Saudi EXPRO, 16 govt bodies record SAR 299 mln surplus from building projects

Logo of the Expenditure and Project Efficiency Authority

A total of 29 government bodies, including ministries, agencies, centers and universities, in cooperation with the Expenditure and Project Efficiency Authority (EXPRO), worked on initiatives to boost the operational efficiency of government buildings, which are expected to achieve a surplus worth SAR 1 billion.

In a statement to Argaam, EXPRO said 16 government agencies succeeded in achieving a surplus worth SAR 299 million as a first stage in the project budgets, as well as providing 715 buildings, most of which are used by the State Properties General Authority (SPGA). In addition, EXPRO raised the operational efficiency of 920 government buildings.

The spending efficiency teams in the government bodies applied several methodologies based on the best practices to achieve such results, including the capacity and demand methodology, which includes studying the actual need against demand for the building. It was found that there are buildings that are not needed, while the space use of other buildings can be improved.

The average employee use of government buildings in the Kingdom stands currently at nearly 40 square meters (sqm), while it should be 20 sqm for each employee, as per the SPGA standards.

Accordingly, a methodology was adopted to improve the current situation, through analyzing and evaluating the condition of buildings, based on four methods, namely cancelation, merger, rearrangement and simplification.

Meanwhile, the merger means a building is merged with another to raise operational efficiency if the study proves the availability of the necessary space or the best practices were applied to reduce the needed open spaces or multi-use spaces.

As for the rearrangement, it is to rearrange and use the spaces in accordance with the best applicable standards, such as raising the efficiency of using the space allocated per square meter for each employee in the government buildings.

The simplification means taking advantage of the digital transformation to provide services electronically, which reduces the actual need for buildings and contributes to raising the efficiency and automation of service delivery.

EXPRO provided its support, in cooperation with government agencies, through the preparation of procedural manuals, holding training courses and workshops, in addition to the periodic evaluation procedures for the spending efficiency practices of the entities.

In addition, EXPRO cooperated with government agencies to set standards to harmonize the requirements and standardize contracts to build asset records in public agencies, as well as develop unified bid specifications for all government agencies to speed up the implementation process.