Saudi Arabia is in urgent need of world-class project management expertise as it has plans to invest up to $385 billion on wide-scale infrastructure development projects in the next five years.

The kingdom's government has announced that the infrastructure investments particularly aim to address the kingdom's housing deficit and to upgrade existing social infrastructure.

Providing strategic support to the development programmes of Saudi Arabia as well as other countries in the GCC, the 13th Project Management Institute-Arabian Gulf Chapter (PMI-AGC) International Conference will be held from January 24 to 26, at the Gulf Hotel.

The event is expected to attract representatives from the Saudi government as well as key figures from the public and private sectors across the GCC, who will meet and interact with leading project management practitioners, engineers, planners, academicians and management executives.

The theme of the conference 'Delivering Value and Productivity Through Project Management: Lessons Learned from the Boom and Bust Cycles', has been chosen to emphasise the importance of lessons learned from boom and bust cycles to enhance the value of projects through adopting innovative and collaborative approaches.

Prominent project management practitioners from all over the world have already confirmed participation at the event, underlining the importance of a dedicated professional networking event catering to the region's project management sector.

'With the scale and value of its infrastructure development programme, Saudi Arabia will definitely require the support of leading regional and international expertise to ensure a thorough and efficient implementation of the wide-scale projects that will be undertaken,' said PMI-AGC president Mohammed Hammad.-TradeArabia News Service