Sustainability and Local Content as Long-Term Value Drivers

Projects that benefit the communities in which they operate are the most sustainable ones. In our experience, they are also the most commercially successful.

The Shifting Definition of Project Value

The definition of project value has expanded significantly over the past decade. Where success was once measured by on-time, on-budget delivery to technical specification, project owners now weigh carbon footprint, biodiversity impact, community benefit, local employment and capability transfer, and long-term social licence to operate.

Regulation is part of the reason, and it is becoming more demanding in most of the markets we work in. But the shift is deeper than compliance. Capital allocators, NOC leadership teams and national governments now assess project proposals differently. A project that hits its technical targets while leaving behind a degraded local environment, an unskilled workforce and a dependent supply chain is increasingly judged a poor project, whatever its P&L says.

We have embedded sustainability thinking into our delivery model because it produces better projects. That it is also increasingly required by clients and regulators is a secondary point.

Local Content: Strategy, Not Obligation

Local content requirements — mandates to employ local labour, procure from local suppliers, and transfer skills to national workforces — feature in virtually every energy market we operate in. Kuwait sets high national employment targets for KPC and its subsidiaries. Saudi Arabia's IKTVA (In-Kingdom Total Value Add) programme, administered by Aramco, requires contractors to demonstrate and progressively increase local content across their supply chains. Nigeria's NCDMB and Angola's content requirements follow similar logic.

Many contractors approach local content as a compliance obligation: something to be managed, reported, and minimised where possible. We see it differently. Local content done well creates more durable relationships with NOCs and government clients, builds a more resilient supply chain, reduces operating costs over time, and develops genuine technical capacity in the host economy. That is competitive advantage, not overhead.

Technology Transfer: Building Durable Capability

The most significant form of local content is technology transfer: the genuine transfer of technical skills, engineering methodology and project delivery capability to national workforces. This is structurally different from hiring local labour for construction. It requires sustained investment in training, mentoring, systems and institutional knowledge.

We structure engagements to include explicit capability transfer objectives. In practice that means co-locating our technical staff with client engineering teams rather than working in isolation, building training programmes around the specific gaps in a client organisation, supporting the establishment of engineering governance frameworks, and building mentoring relationships that outlast the individual engagement.

Clients who receive genuine technology transfer, as opposed to dependency-creating service provision, become stronger long-term partners. Their growing technical sophistication makes the advisory and assurance work more demanding and more useful, and the relationship rests on mutual respect rather than a supplier-client transaction.

Carbon and Environmental Integration

The industry's relationship with carbon is changing faster than almost any other factor affecting project economics. Carbon pricing, scope 3 reporting requirements and tightening methane policy are creating real financial consequences for projects designed without explicit carbon consideration.

On new projects, our engineering teams incorporate carbon intensity assessment as a standard part of concept selection and FEED. For brownfield modifications, we evaluate existing emissions profiles and identify cost-effective abatement: electrification of utilities, waste heat recovery, vapour recovery units for storage tanks, and leak detection and repair programmes for gas infrastructure.

The economics keep improving. Utility-scale solar in the Middle East has been contracted at some of the lowest prices in the world, which makes electrification of production facilities financially attractive without subsidy. Methane detection has advanced to the point where satellite-based monitoring can pinpoint major leak sources. Properly integrated into planning and operations, these tools reduce both carbon liability and operating cost.

Integrating ESG into Project Delivery

ESG requirements are becoming embedded in project financing, particularly where multilateral development banks, export credit agencies or international private co-investors are involved. Credible ESG integration, with real measurement and reporting frameworks, is now a prerequisite for access to certain capital markets.

Our capital enablement practice is fully integrated with our sustainability advisory work, because from a funder's perspective the two are inseparable. We help clients develop ESG frameworks that are proportionate, credible and aligned with international standards (GRI, SASB, TCFD), and that work as genuine management tools rather than disclosure documents.

The projects that attract capital and hold social licence over the coming decade will be the ones that embedded sustainability from the earliest concept stage. That is the approach we bring to every engagement.