Inside the Colossal Earthworks for Saudi Arabia's $500 Billion Linear City
Inside The Line Megaproject
Saudi Arabia's ambitious $500 billion linear city Neom is no longer just a fantasy on the drawing board. An earthmoving operation of truly epic proportions is now underway in the desert to make this mega-project a reality.
The eye-popping numbers have been revealed - a staggering 2 million cubic meters of earth is being shifted per week by a fleet of 260 excavators and 2,000 trucks working around the clock. All of this furious activity is to lay the foundations for The Line, the 170km centrepiece development within the grander Neom scheme.
According to Neom's chief development officer Denis Hickey, the "incredible energy" in Saudi Arabia right now is propelling this unprecedented construction effort. "We have done a lot of the foundation work literally and figuratively," he stated in a recent video update.
But earth shifting is just the start. Neom is also claiming that the world's largest piling operation is happening for The Line's foundations. Construction firms like Keller, Al-Osais, Bauer and others have already driven over 4,500 piles into the ground at a blistering peak rate of 60 piles per day.
Of course, with any project of this scale and ambition, some delays are inevitable. Keller has noted piling work fell behind schedule, requiring them to "redeploy resources" and adjust to "evolution of the design."
But any perceived delays seem like minor hurdles compared to the torrid pace of construction. Heavyweight contractors like Jacobs, Atkins, Aecom and Bechtel are providing technical muscle, leading the design and construction management.
The sheer magnitude of the earthworks required to build a linear city stretching 170km across the desert boggles the mind. Simply moving and compacting that much earth is an ingenious feat in itself.
Whether Neom ultimately lives up to its utopian vision remains to be seen. But one thing is clear - the construction is no longer just a dream. With so much money, machinery and manpower already deployed, the foundation for Saudi's linear city is quickly taking shape, however literally and figuratively that may be. The first phase targets a 2030 completion, an extremely aggressive timeline.