Proger, Engineering and Art. Mega-project in Riyadh

The following is the translation of the article by Andrea Bonafede published in Corriere della Sera on Tuesday, 18 March..

Proger, Engineering and Art. Mega-project in Riyadh
Rutelli* to head the new division. One billion dollars in Saudi Arabia

Engineering meets art. That is the ambition behind Proger’s decision to launch its Art & Culture division, which will bring together all the group’s projects in this field. Proger is a project engineering and management group with revenues exceeding 200 million euros and a margin of 35 million. The new business unit will be chaired by Francesco Rutelli, former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture in the Prodi II government, and Mayor of Rome from 1993 to 2001.

The new division joins the existing ones covering Infrastructure, Infrastructure Network Monitoring, Inspection and Surveillance, Building, Healthcare, Energy, and Security. It was created to respond in an organised and effective way to the demands of a market, the art and culture sector, that could offer significant opportunities in the near future.

Proger has just completed a major undertaking in Saudi Arabia, as the company managing the Riyadh Art project on behalf of the Royal Commission for Riyadh City: an investment of over one billion dollars that will turn the city into the world’s largest open-air museum, featuring seven hundred contemporary artworks. For the Italian firm, the contract is worth 90 million dollars. “This experience made us realise the potential of the sector, which we expect to expand in the coming years. Beyond Saudi Arabia, countries such as China, India, South Africa and Azerbaijan will invest heavily in culture to enhance their status and geopolitical influence,” explains Marco Lombardi, CEO of Proger.

“Soft power” is a concept that has shaped the company’s thinking not only in the decision to launch a new business unit, but also in the choice of who will lead it. The role has been entrusted to Francesco Rutelli, founder and president of the Soft Power Club. “We evaluated many profiles, some with strong engineering backgrounds, others with a predominantly artistic background. But Rutelli was the only one capable of combining artistic expertise with a global geopolitical vision, and the best placed to bring that perspective to our engineering and art specialists,” says Lombardi.

It is no coincidence that Proger is on an international growth trajectory, centred on Saudi Arabia, where it has been operating since 2012 and where further artistic projects are in the pipeline. At the end of February, the company chose Riyadh as the location for its Regional Headquarters, which will coordinate all Proger’s operations across the Middle East and North Africa region.