AFTER working for ten years in a career in the UK where his role was public sector outsourcing, David Brazier decided it was time to expand his horizons in another country. He applied to Happold Consulting, a firm that has been operating in the Kingdom for more than three decades. When he first thought about coming to work in Saudi Arabia, a colleague who had already worked here for several years gave him some guidance: “You must learn to drink tea!” Armed with this sound advice, he came over on three work trips, as well as bringing his wife and two children on an acquaintance trip, and then they all moved to Jeddah in January 2007. Brazier's first impressions of the city that he was about to get deeply involved with began during his aircraft's descent to land. “I remember vividly flying in on a Saudia flight. It got in at about 5 A.M. and we flew in from the north and the sheer sprawl and physical size of Jeddah surprised me enormously. Once on the ground, the most striking thing was the dominance of cars.” Other impressions soon followed: “The city struck me as having an element of wasted opportunity – it is in a wonderful location, it is so beautiful. Effectively, it is a city in transition. There has been fantastic under investment in the past and the challenges are growing very quickly. There is massive latent potential and vibrancy in the city; it has needed to catch up and it is doing this very quickly. I am very confident in the way that it is approaching its future – it has too many assets not to be successful.” Brazier's job title is Project Director and his role involves working with Mayor of Jeddah Adel Fakih, and the municipality, to develop a 20-year practical plan for the future development of the city of Jeddah. “This is drawing together the various strands, agencies and organizations who are going to pull together to deliver Jeddah's potential. We interact with water companies, transport organizations, work out how to create more jobs in Jeddah and look at how that affects spatial planning. We have to look at how much land needs to be allocated for industrial purposes, leisure space, and so on. It is a long-term planning exercise, a framework which draws these components together and then identifies a strategic and implementable plan for the future of Jeddah.” Brazier went on to discuss Jeddah's obvious dependence on cars and the question of public recreation space. “The Ministry of Transport and the Jeddah Municipality have undertaken a comprehensive assessment of a viable public transport system. They are developing a proposal now that will go to the private sector to implement an essential amount of public transport in the city. There is also going to be significant upgrading of the Corniche and there is an on-going program of developing public space within the urban area of the city.” He also pointed out the key projects in the Jeddah area that are potentially great catalysts for the development of the city: “There is the major investment in King Abdullah Economic City, as well as King Abdullah University of Science & Technology. Some of the challenges are: how does Jeddah draw on its role as the gateway to the two Holy Cities, how does it capitalize on its position on the Red Sea and its position as a historic trading route? There is also the tremendous opportunity coming with the land-bridge and the train lines coming through. The municipality has got to make sure that all these opportunities are channeled correctly so that the city is leading them rather than them being imposed on the city.” The advice on drinking tea was not ignored either. With about 80 percent of Brazier's work colleagues being Saudis, he has generally found them to be humorous and engaging. “The culture of building relationships here is very different to the experience that I had had in the UK. I had to learn to build relationships more slowly, to be more patient. Things happen quickly here once you have built the relationships, but you cannot go in presuming that you can make things happen immediately. You have to strike a balance between being adaptable but also maintaining the disciplines, style and culture that made your services attractive in the first place.” Although the hours he works are so long that he doesn't want to mention the figure, Brazier finds that he sees more of his family now than he did in the UK. “Living in a compound means that I am not running a house and going off to B & Q to buy light bulbs, or maintaining a garden. It is an insular type of life, but it is an easy one. However, there is a definite sense of missing what the city has to offer because it is too easy to stay in the compound – so you don't engage with the city.”
