A multi-disciplinary consultancy, spanning a diverse number of sectors and with strong pan-African experience, Khatib & Alami is well poised to support an array of different companies in the telecom infrastructure space. TowerXchange finds out more about the company, projects that it has been involved in and the value that it can bring to the telecom sector.
TowerXchange: Please introduce Khatib & Alami, and tell us about your history and footprint.
Working at the forefront of rapidly changing urban landscapes has taught us that ambitious visions are delivered through uncompromising rigor.
Khatib & Alami (K&A) is an international multidisciplinary consultancy comprising architects, engineers, planners and other technical specialists. We offer deep expertise, combined with a broad understanding of delivering complex major projects within agreed timeframes and budget.
K&A is among the top 100 international design firms in the world and the top 10 in the Middle East, according to Engineering News-Record (ENR), and employs 5,000 talented people across more than 30 locations. Our award-winning work covers a broad spectrum of sectors and disciplines, including: architecture and urban planning; transportation and urban mobility; water & environment; energy; program management services; and Geospatial Integration Systems.
In other words, our experts are involved in enhancing infrastructure, creating new buildings, developing neighborhoods and reshaping entire cities. We are driven by curiosity, with a firm belief in the importance of delivering exceptional quality in order to make a positive and sustainable contribution to the communities in which we work.
TowerXchange: Can you give us an overview of your solutions for the telecoms market and what services you provide to customers in this sector?
Generally, African countries have underdeveloped GSM activity relative to other countries. This creates an opportunity to establish a profitable business for companies providing this service for the following reasons:
- Expansion needs due to weak coverage over the territory of the countries
- Large potential growth in the subscriber to population ratio, providing a big opportunity for expansion
- These countries lag behind in the new technologies of GSM 4G, 5G and data utilisation. These new technologies require the construction of additional sites.
- Flexibility of regulations related to GSM activity with regards to the environment compared to other countries
Added value for K&A Company
- Highly experienced in project management
- Strengthening presence in African countries
- Ability to provide a cost-effective design specifications for tower structure and Foundation
- Develop power solution by using hybrid systems for off-grid sites (a combination between solar power systems and wind turbines and generators)
- Consultancy studies for site construction
- Consultancy studies for datacenter (MSC)
EPC
K&A will create a platform of local and international EPC companies in addition to an in-house teams to serve the demand on the telecom infrastructure.
Site Acquisition
- Searching and determining the site location geographically, issuing the necessary permits (NOCs from utility provider, Civil Aviation Authority, oil & gas companies where applicable etc.)
- Civil work: Foundation (raft pile), fence (boundary wall block or chain linked fence), tower erection, and access road provision if needed.
- Installation of telecom equipment: New sites, modification of existing sites, modernisation of existing site, and swapping between vendors.
Operation and maintenance passive and active
Fibre network and data center design
TowerXchange: You work on ambitious projects across a number of sectors, can you share some insight into how this range of experience has enabled you to develop your offering in telecoms infrastructure?
Khatib & Alami meets the rising expectations for faster, better and more responsive access to Internet services, the widespread implementation of convergent triple play system, the predominance of virtual private network, the liberalisation of the communication sector, and the challenging implementation of service communications technology with its cutting-edge features. Telecommunication is now central to most public and private projects and for this reason, in early 1990s; the Telecommunications specialty has been given the attention it deserves as a distinctive, independent section at K&A.
Our main advantage stems from our technology leadership in major industries: oil/gas, utilities and public works. In addition to basic services such as strategic planning, integrated solutions, system engineering and network architecture, our engineers focus on performance optimisation, network resilience and disaster recovery, thereby offering comprehensive solutions.
Our Telecommunications Services encompasses:
- In building systems
- Voice Switching: PABX, Local and Transit Central offices, Next Generation
- Switching Networks
- Fibre Transmission: Backbone and FTTx Technologies
- Multiplexing Systems-Microwave Transmission < Voice, Data and Video
- Satellite Transmission Voice, Data and Video
- Two-way and Trunking Radio Networks (TETRA)
- Cellular Networks (GSM, CDMA, etc.)
- Wireless Data (WiFi and WiMAX) – Telecom Traffic Management
- Telecom Facility Management
- Vehicle and Location-based Services & Systems
- SCADA and telemetry Networks Advanced Metering Infrastructure
- ESCO:K&A can offer the MNOs and the towercos solutions like power purchase agreement, monthly flat free model and energy saving agreement model due to its involvement in the studies, design and design development of the renewable energy solutions including but not limited to solar, wind turbine, and hybrid solutions
TowerXchange: Tell us about your experience in the African market – can you give examples of your projects and successes there?
Since 2002, we have been operational in the African Continent and have established permanent offices in Sudan, Ethiopia and Gabon, in addition to previous & current ongoing activities in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Tanzania.
We foresee a larger expansion in the years to come. We engage and partner with many local African firms, create local employment, train and provide them with the know-how, and with the needed engineering tools and systems. We ensure capacity building while implementing our K&A’s Local Industry Participation plans on each project undertaken.
K&A Work and Africa Journey
K&A’s ambition in Africa is to partake of the design and engineering activities and projects, while having the opportunity to bring its international knowhow across all its functional areas, predominantly those of a multidisciplinary nature, and deliver the most innovative and appropriate solutions. Local industry participation and collaborative partnerships have been at the core of its strategic growth plan in the region.
Below are selected utilities, energy & telecom projects in African countries:
Sierra Leone
Management Contractor for EDSA – Sierra Leone
A three-year performance management contract between the Ministry of Energy in Sierra Leone and Khatib & Alami (K&A) was signed as of November 1st, 2016. Under this contract, K&A, as the Management Contractor for the Electricity Distribution and Supply Authority (EDSA), is expected to perform management, operation and capacity building under a fully delegated authority to run the utility’s business and will be the solely authorised agent to administer its assets and implement its functions for the duration of the contract.
K&A will lead the implementation of a comprehensive business plan, which is key to strengthening management and operational skills, building effective practices and developing = EDSA’s global performance into the future. The plan also encompasses customer service improvement and extensive investment plans for the rehabilitation and upgrade of the electricity distribution network. This project will allow more people throughout the country to bene?t from access to electricity.
During the first year, K&A covered a lot of ground and genuinely established the foundation for the business sustainability, after coordinating with all key stakeholders, such as The State House, the Ministry of Energy, the World Bank, EDSA Board of Directors and others, to assess the status of EDSA and having listened to their insightful thoughts and ideas on the perceived challenges and way forward. In this first year, major achievements were attained:
1) Due Diligence of EDSA
In line with best practice, K&A conducted a comprehensive due-diligence exercise to establish the baseline of the Authority, recognise the magnitude of challenges and devise the most appropriate plan to uplift the business along the sustainability; the MC certainly does not belief in ‘one size fits all’ and accordingly ensured the plan suits the particular circumstances of EDSA business environment, considering its strength/weaknesses and the GoSL Vision for the Electricity Supply Industry
2) Comprehensive Strategic Plan
The Plan was developed along parallel business streams to address the key functions in EDSA in order to ensure improvement is pursued in all directions; it also incorporates the original business plan and goes beyond it
3) Strengthen Existing Network
K&A enforced a disciplined monthly progress of the substation annual preventive maintenance plan 2017 which achieved 85.1% average monthly progress against the annual plan. This includes a serious tree trimming exercise which aimed at drastically reducing outages caused by weather conditions.
4) Core business improvement
The International SAIFI and SAIDI indices were significantly improved and maintained on average below the agreed Baseline.
5) Growth and electrification
K&A facilitated 2 major electrification projects, 50 new feeders, additional 2,735KVA capacity with 11 transformers and nearly 600 newly installed poles.
6) Business sustainability
K&A implemented serious cost control measures that allowed cost optimisation reflected in loss reduction, revenue improvement where US$10mn in arrears were recovered, policies and procedures, capacity building. On human capacity building, approximately 150 Staff members i.e. 26% of all EDSA full-time staff have been given training
7) Organisational
A new organisation chart for EDSA was established and approved by the BOD; this was also backed by compiling a significant number of job descriptions in key business units.
8) Enabling environment
K&A worked tirelessly on deployment of tools and facilities; accordingly, the following interim solutions were made available to enhance reporting and to mitigate the delays and funding issues for Information Technology/Operation Technology (IT/OT):
- Customer Call Center (672)
- Customer Services Application Tool
- Meters Installation Application Tool
- Large Customer Tracking Application Tool
- Asset Registry Mobile App and Database
- GIS Mapping based ArcFM Geodatabase
K&A issued two major tenders funded by the World Bank including the Freetown Network Rehabilitation and AMI Deployment for Large Customers; moreover, K&A worked with MCCU to donate a Network Survey and GIS Mapping for Freetown Area.
Egypt
With more 700 employees in Egypt offices and experience in the Egyptian market, K&A started its first partnership with Cellnet, an EPC company, which was established in 2005 with the main objective of providing leading technical and telecom services for the GSM field, including but not limited to site acquisition, tower construction, telecom implementation, telecom engineering and satellite services and operation and maintenance. Cellnet-international Holding operates in four countries; with Egypt as headquarter, Sudan, Lebanon and KSA, having a workforce that exceeds 2000 employees with continuous plans for expansion. With K&A’s long experience in PMC/PMO and design, this partnership will lead to be the contractor of choice in the telecommunication industry in the African countries
Nigeria
EKEDP GIS Foundation Platform – Lagos, Nigeria
K&A is building an advanced digital information infrastructure and GIS for Eko Electricity Distribution Company in Lagos – Nigeria in order to improve its efficiency and enhance the quality of services.
To this end, K&A has successfully completed the system design & architecture, Enterprise GIS Data Model Deployment for EKEDP Electric distribution network, ArcFM Desktop and Web Platform Deployment to support asset management activities at EKEDP, Data Migration of EKEDP Network assets into the Enterprise Geodatabase following an extensive GPS field survey and underground cable detection activities.
Further field survey activities are taking place by EKEDP and shared with K&A to simulate the network conditions in GIS and establish a seamless integration with network Planning and Real Time Operation SW packages (ETAP) for the purpose of Load flow & Short Circuit calculations along an Outage Management with real time SCADA integration.
Ivory Coast
ABATTA Transmission Lines:
Ivory Coast was betting on the construction of new gas-fired power plants, mainly CCGT projects, to boost its installed capacity and to improve its efficiency by reducing energy losses linked to power generation. Ivory Coast aimed to reach electricity self-sufficiency and to become a net power exporter, with a capacity of 1,540 MW, to be raised to 3,000MW in 2018 and 4,000MW in 2020.
K&A provided engineering services and was involved in the preparation of a detailed design for a new 2x300MVA CCGT plant and new 90kV and 225kV overhead transmission lines starting from the two 100MVA transformers located at the output of the 300MW combined cycle power plant of Abatta. New overhead transmission lines will be connected to the existing 90kV and 225kV lines of the national grid and will be part of the interconnection with Ghana and other African nations. Despite the challenges, K&A achieved the desired on-time delivery and a world class solution in design of the transmission lines and CCGT power plant. In addition, K&A provided constructions works supervision, control and monitoring in order to achieve Client satisfaction and finish the project at time and within the allocated budget.
As part of the Scope of Works, K&A was involved in the following:
- Study and Assessment of existing 220kV and 90kV line and their capacities
- Design of power plant with auxiliaries site survey - spot checking for tower implantation of 220kV line and 90kV lines
- Layout and arrangements of switchyards
- Civil and Structural works of switchyard’s gantries and other major frameworks
- Preparation of detailed design drawings
- Major Equipment technical specifications
- QA/QC and project management
- Project control and monitoring
TowerXchange: What are the biggest challenges African tower owners face, and how can Khatib & Alami help them overcome them?
It is worth noting that African towercos are, by their very nature, diversified businesses, they are something like 50% towers and 50% logistics for shipping diesel around due to many sites off-grid in SSA and with the towercos are obliged to provide power to the sites. With K&A’s experience in providing solutions for the power problems including but not limited to ESCO solutions, towercos can focus on their core business.
TowerXchange: As 5G rolls out, requirements for infrastructure will change in many ways, with the line between dedicated telecoms assets and city infrastructure becoming blurred – can you share your experience of how 5G will affect the markets you operate in?
We know big changes, such as smart cities, are coming but who will run the infrastructure the smart cities will rely on? Towercos would seem well placed to play a part, but doing so will move them further from their traditional model of buying existing infrastructure assets from a telco, entering into a long term MSAs (master service agreements), running those assets and building out new ones. Those towercos will have the infrastructure in place and the resources to carry such activities and be ready for this smart cities demands.
With strong experience in urban planning, smart grid and IOT network design, PMC, PMO and cities design, K&A can offer solution to leverage the position of towercos in the SmartCity play.
