217. Beyond the Contract: How Rabigh Reinforcement Reached First Fire 14 Months After Award

In this episode of The POWER Podcast, Sandeep Kumar Gupta, sales director with Siemens Energy Gas Services, and Naira Elsayed, a senior project manager with Elsewedy Electric Power Systems Projects (PSP), discuss the Rabigh Reinforcement Combined Cycle Power Plant, a finalist for a 2026 POWER Top Plant Award.

The 1,179-MW plant sits on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, about 135 kilometers north of Jeddah, in a region that carries some of the Kingdom’s heaviest summer load. The project reached first fire in July 2025, roughly 14 months after the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract was awarded, and logged 12 million man-hours with no lost-time injuries.

Gupta and Elsayed describe how early execution activities moved ahead while broader contractual arrangements were still being finalized, and what that took in trust and risk management among Siemens Energy, Elsewedy Electric PSP, and the Saudi Electricity Company. They explain how the team responded when Red Sea shipping disruptions made vessels hard to find, arranging a special voyage for the gas turbine generators and rerouting a 380-ton steam turbine generator around the Cape of Good Hope. They also cover recruiting and training skilled labor in a crowded market, building a safety culture around shared responsibility, the project’s F-class gas turbines and 3x1 multi-shaft configuration, Siemens Energy’s expanded EPC role, and the lessons they say other projects can take from Rabigh.

For more on the project, read POWER’s article, “Beyond the Contract: How Rabigh Reinforcement Reached First Fire 14 Months After Award,” at https://www.powermag.com/beyond-the-contract-how-rabigh-reinforcement-reached-first-fire-14-months-after-award.