environment

Ingeokring Newsletter
ENGINEERS ABROAD
An Engineering Geologist in the Middle East
Bernice Baardman
Fugro Peninsular
Doha, Qatar
fugroqtr@qatar.net.qa
Doha?
No, I hadn't heard of Doha either, before coming to the
Middle East. It turned out to be the capital of Qatar, a
small peninsular country in the Persian Gulf where oil
exploration started somewhat later than in Saudi-Arabia,
Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. But Qatar's emir is
trying hard to catch up with rich, well-developed cities
like Dubai. That leads to many new constructions, which
in turn creates a lot of work for geotechnical companies.
engineering and reporting, to maintaining drilling rigs,
improving lab quality, dealing with clients, fixing the
network and, almost daily, consulting the Fugro Dubai
office for all those times when I feel short of being a
specialist commercial manager, senior engineer,
operations manager, IT specialist or lab manager.
Figure 2: Offshore jack-up rig ready to move.
Projects and clients are very diverse, too. One drilling
rig can be working for a local construction company
who is building a three story residence for Sheikh
Mohammed, runs into trouble with the highly weathered
limestone during foundation excavation because no
geotechnical investigation had been carried out, and
sends us a fax asking: 'For a soil test of clay soil on our
site we request you to investigate the clay soil and give
us a report'. At least it is more comprehensible than the
request in Arabic, with a phone number (I can read Arabic
numbers by now) that answers 'Salaam aleikum, ???, no
English', beepbeepbeep.
Figure 1: Fugro’s nearshore jack-up rig Geo Giant
drilling for Pearl of the Gulf Island, Doha.
Work
Fugro Peninsular is a branch office of Fugro Middle
East, with headquarters in Dubai, for the onshore and
nearshore geotechnical market in Qatar. It is a small
office with two drilling rigs, one and a half drill crew, a
basic lab, some Asian staff and one geotechnical
engineer. That gives me quite an interesting job, being
involved in all aspects of a geotechnical investigation.
From preparing quotations, planning fieldworks,
supervising fieldwork and lab testing, logging rock,
At the same time the other rig might be working in Ras
Laffan Industrial City, one of the three major sites in
Qatar where offshore gas is processed before being
exported, for an international oil company. Client
representatives will fly in from Europe or the USA and
make sure we deliver extensive project quality plans,
adhere to the strictest safety regulations, protect the
environment, and comply with their detailed specs to
obtain high quality geotechnical data for the foundation
design of their gas plant or pipeline.
If projects are slow, there will always be a request to fly
over and assist in the Dubai office, or to hop on a
helicopter for a rigmove. Rigmoves are interesting, short
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