ASAS Training Institute, established in Dammam in 2010 and licensed by the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation, is exhibiting at Big 5 Construct Saudi with NEBOSH and IOSH accredited safety programmes. Its presence points at a constraint no equipment stand resolves: a 3.4 million-strong construction workforce with more than 200,000 skilled vacancies.
Most of the stands at Big 5 Construct Saudi sell something that can be delivered on a truck. ASAS Training does not, and its presence in a hall of manufacturers is a useful reminder that the constraint on Saudi construction delivery is not only what gets supplied to a site but who is standing on it.
ASAS Training Institute was established in 2010 in Dammam and operates as a division of Khalifa Algosaibi Investment, the same holding company behind the construction chemicals manufacturer CMCI, the fireproofing producer Arabian Vermiculite Industries and the steel foundry SICAST. It is licensed by the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation and delivers programmes across human resources, health and safety, leadership and management, alongside international certifications and assessments.
The health and safety portfolio is where its work intersects most directly with the construction supply chain on the floor. The institute is an accredited centre for NEBOSH qualifications, including the International General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety and the NEBOSH HSE Award in Managing Risks and Risk Assessment at Work, and delivers IOSH programmes and Highfield qualifications covering working safely, working at height, confined space entry and food safety, according to the institute.
Those are not incidental certificates. On a large Saudi project, the safety qualification held by a supervisor is a contractual requirement, an insurance condition and a prequalification criterion, and a contractor that cannot evidence a trained workforce does not reach the tender stage on major packages. Training has consequently moved from an overhead line into the compliance stack.
The demand behind it is structural. Saudi Arabia's construction workforce stood at roughly 3.4 million in GASTAT's fourth-quarter 2025 labour force survey, of which approximately 92 per cent were non-Saudi, drawn predominantly from India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Egypt. Industry estimates put current unfilled skilled positions above 200,000, with specialist roles in project management, engineering and skilled trades sitting open for three to six months on average. A workforce that size, turning over continually and arriving with heterogeneous training backgrounds, has to be certified and re-certified constantly.
Saudization adds the second pressure. Nationalisation targets under Nitaqat are met comfortably in white-collar, supervisory and health, safety and environment functions, and much less so in the skilled trades, where the bulk of construction headcount sits. Closing that gap requires technical and vocational capacity rather than recruitment, which is why the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation and the private institutes licensed by it have become part of the construction conversation rather than a parallel education story.
The pipeline gives the problem its scale. Saudi construction output is forecast to grow 6.2 per cent this year to around SAR 232.14 billion, and the Saudi Contractors Authority recorded 25 project awards worth more than SR 29.5 billion in June. Every one of those awards carries a manpower schedule, and none of them can be delivered by equipment alone.
For the manufacturers exhibiting around it, there is a commercial read as well. A growing share of what is sold on this floor, from connected plant to building management systems to predictive maintenance platforms, only produces value if someone on site knows how to operate it. Technology that outruns the skills of the workforce operating it delivers a fraction of its business case, which makes training an unglamorous but load-bearing part of the same market.
Big 5 Construct Saudi runs at the Riyadh Front Exhibition and Conference Center until 2 September.