Utility Impact Assessment of Road Projects in the State of Qatar

Abstract

Qatar has been blessed with large reserves of natural gas and since the past 20 years its leaders have been busy formulating its path to modernization. Henceforth, the sovereign state has been and is still going through tremendous development phase to meet the 2030 vision of making Qatar a world class country and giving its citizens a very high standard of living. This is to be achieved with development in key sectors namely economic, social, environmental and more importantly human development. Moreover, in 2010 Qatar was awarded to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which increased the country’s pipeline of projects such as stadia, hotels, metro and ports (air and sea). This also led to fast tracking of its stockpile of existing infrastructure projects to meet 2022 deadlines. Accordingly, significant portion of these projects will be constructed within the right of way or road reserve. Although the current practice of road construction and utility installation in Qatar is in-line with world best practices, but such practices were not followed stringently in the past. Moreover, Qatar’s cities have gone through an excessive urban densification, which meant that the service providers had to provide greater number of utilities and road authorities had to design and construct complex road networks that involved tunnels, bridges, underpasses and overpasses. These challenges are further compounded by the fact that there are narrow right of ways for the installation of all these utilities in the urban areas. In tackling these challenges, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME) along with road authorities and utility providers have gone through robust review and modification of their practices. As a result, actions were taken and in particular MME developed a process namely, utility impact assessment process that guides the road designers to collaborate with utility designers to achieve a more value engineered outcome.