Dharan Techno-Valley

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To the south of the Saudi Arabian city of Dammam is a centre of scientific learning that is extending the boundaries of technological development in the oil-rich Middle East.

Designed in the mould of established international science parks such as those found in Singapore, Cambridge, New York and Silicon Valley, Dharan Techno-Valley (DTV) is fast becoming a centre of educational excellence, driving innovation within the Middle East’s fast-paced business arena.

Situated alongside Saudi Arabia’s famous King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) in Dharan, DTV’s adopted tagline of “local mission with a global vision” has been driving its ambition to become one of the world’s leading technological knowledge bases since its formation more than five years ago.

“It is a technical university with 8,000 students and close to 700 faculty members and researchers,” explains Dhahran Techno-Valley Company (DTVC) Vice President, Dr Halim Hamid Redhwi. “We are not a state university focused on social or medical sciences, but are instead targeted towards technical subjects.”

Close to a quarter of all the university’s students derive from Saudi Arabia with the rest coming from all over the world, with all faculty staff and researchers trained in Europe and the USA.

“We started back in 2001 with the assignment of establishing a science park,” says Dr Halim, who chaired the committee of faculty members to establish the park.

“It was a new experience for us, so we visited many science parks in Europe, the US and the Far East,” notes Dr Halim. The board worked with a range of organisations, including UNESCO, the British Council and the UK Science Park Association, when looking for a model to suit and fit the Saudi Arabian environment.

“We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so we learnt from the experience of others and took a ‘leapfrog type of approach’ before developing our own model of a science park,” Dr Halim says.

By 2004 the first company had moved onto the site, which became the first science park of its kind in the Middle East.

Fully funded by KFUPM, the site covers close to 770,000 square metres of land. The master plan of the site was designed by Houston-based HOK, with land next to the KFPUM being allocated to DTV by the university itself. 

A centre of excellence

Located seven kilometres from Dhahran city centre, DTV borders the local US Consulate. The state-owned national oil company ARAMCO is headquartered northwest of the site, while to the south is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Air Force Base.

“We started as a basic science park, but back in 2005, with the university having many different activities going on, all of them were merged and we created a new organisation in DTV,” says Halim. 

Today, the site mainly consists of six entities — the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Science Park (KASP), the Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Science and Technology Centre (SciTech), an innovation centre, a business incubator, a liaison office and a consultancy services centre.

“It changed from a single science park and other scattered facilities to DTV, encompassing all six entities, with the objective of establishing an integrated ecosystem to drive knowledge and economic development in Saudi Arabia,” says Dr Halim.

Halim describes the site as “one of those unique places where big companies from across the world are together under one roof”.

With a core focus on petroleum engineering, it is perhaps no surprise that names such as Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Halliburton are working in such close proximity at DTV.

Alongside a number of leading petroleum industry names, the site has also attracted some of the bigger names in the technology field such as Honeywell and General Electric, as well as a wide range of companies from downstream in the oil and gas sectors.

“We are not spreading ourselves too thin,” says Dr Halim. “We are focused on oil and gas, petrochemicals, IT and water technologies.

“In order to get the country moving towards a knowledge-based economy, rather than an oil-based economy, we are developing knowledge-based industry,” says Dr Halim. “The research centres in DTV deal with everything from oil production and processing technologies to gas production, and the firms working here are all very high-tech companies.

“We invited them to bring their global experience and establish their centres in the science park,” he adds.

“All the companies who have established or are establishing their research centre in DTV, have got huge and well-established research centres back home, so their objective by coming to and establishing centres in Saudi Arabia is to do business with our local industry and develop innovative technology that can handle the problems that they face locally,” he explains. 

Embracing years of success

Established in 1963, KFUPM will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary next year, and as one of the university’s biggest success stories, DTV will have a major role to play throughout the celebrations.

“The university is one of the major suppliers of engineers and managers for the local petroleum and petrochemical industry,” says Dr Halim. “Of all the professional staff at Saudi Aramco, close to 70 per cent are KFUPM graduates, from the CEO down to trainee juniors.”

Dr Halim, who is currently acting as interim CEO with the designation of Vice President for the Dhahran Techno-Valley Company, says that any technology developed at DTV, would be transferable to sites anywhere in the world. “We’ve got a commercial value, but it is also a unique place,” he says. “Here you have technology, collaborative research, and development all under the same roof.”

To raise the global profile of DTV, Dr Halim promotes the importance of having a presence at major gatherings of oil and gas industry leaders. 

“We participate in a lot of global events, from various science centre society events to international science parks association meetings,” he notes. “We are also a member of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP), a US-based organisation that is very relevant to us.

Creating a company

Last year, with its prestige continuing to blossom, the Dharan Techno-Valley Company (DTVC) was created to safeguard and maintain DTV’s commercial value and its financial future.

“In 2010 the government granted a charter for establishing a company in the university which is very unique for Saudi Arabia,” says Dr Halim. “DTVC is different from DTV and has a board consisting of seven individuals including three from the business community and three  from the university, chaired by the President of the university.

“This company has given a big boost to all DTV activities and as the university’s professors have little experience in establishing a company, we hired Booz & Company as our lead consultant to set the entity up.

“We are currently in the final stages of setting up DTV’s human resources department, with Booz & Company acting as strategic planning consultants. Support is also coming from the government to cover the expense of our consultants.”

Thanks to such shrewd moves into the commercial sphere, DTV is receiving glowing praise from global and national businesses, and has a growing reputation within both the worlds of academia and industry.

Having celebrated its fifth year of operations, DTV is demonstrating how far it has come in such a short space of time.

As it looks towards what will likely be a successful and relevant future, the oil and gas, and petrochemical industries will continue to watch DTV’s development as they look to the site for innovative technologies and the next generation of employees to take each sector onto the next level. 

http://dtv.kfupm.edu.sa