Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects are redefining what can be built, how quickly it can be delivered and what visitors, residents and businesses will expect from the built environment. From NEOM and The Red Sea to Qiddiya, Diriyah, New Murabba and ROSHN communities, Vision 2030 is creating cities, destinations and districts on a scale rarely seen before. 

But behind the architectural ambition lies a less visible operational challenge: how do you keep these enormous developments clean? 

For the facilities management industry, cleaning and Soft FM can no longer be treated as services that are mobilised shortly before a building opens. At giga-project scale, they have to be designed into the development from the outset. 

Having worked on FM strategy at both Diriyah Gate and NEOM’s The Line, Michael Dalton, facilities management and estates leader and Board Director of the IFMA Members’ Council, describes cleaning as one of the most underestimated pressure points in delivering these developments to a world-class standard. 

“The first challenge is sheer scale meeting speed,” he says. 

Unlike conventional developments, giga-projects do not necessarily hand over one completed building at a time. Precincts, districts and entire zones can come online in rolling phases, sometimes before surrounding infrastructure is fully complete. Cleaning specifications, staffing models and operating procedures therefore have to be developed while the nature and patterns of occupancy are still evolving. 

At Diriyah, Dalton says, estates and facilities operations had to be planned directly from the construction phase, with no established legacy operation against which to benchmark requirements. 

This creates a fundamental shift in the role of Soft FM. The question is no longer simply how many cleaners are required for a building. It is how an organisation can create a consistent operating model across multiple assets, locations and stages of development while those assets themselves continue to change. 

The geography of clean 

Scale is only one part of the equation. Saudi Arabia’s environmental conditions add another layer of complexity. 

Fine desert dust, sand ingress and extreme heat can dramatically increase cleaning requirements. Surfaces that might require weekly attention in other environments can require daily intervention. At the same time, the Kingdom’s sustainability ambitions are putting pressure on FM providers to reduce water consumption and rethink conventional cleaning methods. 

For Soft FM providers, this creates a difficult balance: maintaining exceptionally high standards while reducing the resources required to achieve them. 

Aleemudeen Mohammed, Head of Learning & Development & Quality (Corporate), points to the diversity of environments being developed across the Kingdom. NEOM alone encompasses vastly different operating contexts, from The Line and the mountain destination of Trojena to the industrial hub of Oxagon and the island resort of Sindalah. 

The cleaning requirements in each environment will be different. 

A desert development may have to contend with constant dust and sand ingress. A luxury hospitality destination will demand a very different service standard. Industrial environments introduce their own specialist cleaning requirements. 

The Red Sea presents another example. Its planned development includes resorts, residences and destinations spread across islands and inland sites. Here, traditional high-consumption cleaning models will have to evolve alongside ambitious environmental commitments. 

The future of Soft FM, therefore, is not simply about making places cleaner. It is about understanding how cleanliness is achieved — how much water, energy, chemicals, plastic and logistics are required to deliver it. 

People remain at the centre 

Technology may be transforming cleaning, but people remain critical to the success of Soft FM operations. 

Giga-projects require cleaning and soft services at a volume that the domestic market cannot supply alone. Recruitment is therefore only the beginning. Providers must also address training, supervision, retention, career development and quality assurance at scale. 

“The lesson that stuck with me is that quality control cannot be retrofitted,” says Dalton. “Training, supervision structures and KPIs need to be designed in from day one.” 

For Shahinsha Bashajan, Head of Soft Services at Musanadah Facilities Management, consistency is one of the defining expectations of giga-project asset owners. 

Whether cleaning is being delivered in a high-profile visitor destination, public area, operational facility or remote site, the agreed standard must remain consistent. A weak point in one location can influence user experience, brand reputation, health and safety performance and confidence in the wider operation. 

Internationally benchmarked standards can provide the foundation. Bashajan points to the British Institute of Cleaning Science (BICSc) framework as one example, covering cleaning skills, safe working practices and quality assurance. Musanadah currently operates two BICSc-accredited training centres in the Kingdom, supporting clients including Vision 2030 developments such as Royal Commission for AlUla and Diriyah. 

But training cannot operate in isolation. 

The workforce of the future will need stronger specialist competencies, multilingual training, structured career pathways and effective supervision. As Soft FM operations expand, providers will also need to navigate Saudization requirements while building sufficiently large and skilled talent pools. 

From manpower to intelligence 

Perhaps the biggest change underway is that scalability can no longer depend simply on adding more people. 

“Soft FM can keep pace, but only if scalability is built on systems rather than headcount alone,” says Bashajan. 

Digital transformation is becoming an increasingly important part of that model. 

Computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) platforms, mobile workforce tools and GPS-enabled systems can provide managers with visibility across geographically dispersed operations. They can help monitor service delivery, track performance against SLAs, identify gaps and provide clients with real-time operational information. 

For large developments, this visibility can be critical. 

The cleaning requirements of a destination can change dramatically according to occupancy and footfall. Washroom utilisation, waste generation and cleaning frequencies can fluctuate within hours, particularly in entertainment, hospitality and public environments. 

This is where technologies such as occupancy sensors, IoT-enabled washrooms, digital inspections, autonomous cleaning equipment, predictive deployment and AI-supported workforce planning become increasingly relevant. 

Mohammed argues that these technologies will move from being innovative additions to becoming operational necessities. 

The objective is not to replace people, but to deploy them more intelligently — directing resources where and when they are needed while improving consistency and reducing unnecessary work. 

Bringing Soft FM into the blueprint 

Technology and training, however, will not solve a problem if Soft FM is brought into the conversation too late. 

One of the strongest themes emerging from the giga-project experience is the need to involve FM professionals much earlier in the development process. 

Cleaning requirements should be considered during masterplanning and design, rather than after handover. This means looking at access, maintainability, façade cleaning, waste movement, equipment rooms and cleaning productivity before assets are completed. 

The principle is straightforward: design buildings and destinations that can be efficiently operated and maintained, rather than trying to make them maintainable after they have already been built. 

This is particularly important when projects are delivered through multiple phases. If cleaning requirements are not considered during design, operational teams can inherit spaces that are difficult to access, inefficient to service or dependent on resource-intensive processes. 

For Dalton, this means treating cleaning and Soft FM as a design input rather than a back-of-house afterthought. 

Building trust at giga-project scale 

The shift from traditional FM delivery to intelligent, measurable Soft FM also has implications for the relationship between asset owners and service providers. 

Saudi Arabia’s FM market is expected to continue expanding as asset owners increasingly outsource hard and soft services. The arrival of major developments and international events, including Expo 2030 Riyadh and the 2034 FIFA World Cup, will create further demand. 

But growth alone will not build trust. 

Asset owners are looking for consistency, transparency and measurable performance. They need to know not simply that a service has been delivered, but that the agreed standard is being achieved across every part of a complex operation. 

Bashajan cites a recent independent customer survey of Musanadah clients that recorded an overall Customer Satisfaction Index close to 80 percent, with open communication scoring 93 percent. He attributes the results to customer experience management, training and digital transformation, including dashboards that provide clients with performance metrics and real-time data. 

For Soft FM providers, this points towards a future in which performance is increasingly visible and measurable. 

Can Soft FM keep pace? 

The answer appears to be yes — but not through scale alone. 

Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects are creating a new operating environment in which cleaning companies and FM providers will have to combine people, technology, sustainability and operational intelligence. 

The successful providers may not necessarily be those with the largest workforce. They will be those capable of deploying the right people, technology and processes across complex and constantly changing environments without allowing standards to fall. 

Ultimately, giga-projects will be judged not only by the buildings and attractions they create, but by the everyday experience they deliver. 

A spectacular destination with inconsistent cleanliness can undermine the very ambition it was designed to represent. 

As NEOM’s communities emerge, Diriyah moves towards full opening, Qiddiya comes online and other developments progress towards operation, Soft FM will face its biggest test yet: whether the industry can scale its capabilities as quickly as Saudi Arabia is scaling its cities. 

The challenge is no longer simply to keep places clean. 

It is to make cleanliness consistent, measurable, sustainable and intelligent — from day one, and at giga-project scale.