On the sidelines of LEAP 2023, the global tech event, Telecom Review spoke with Al Madinah Regional Municipality’s Deputy Mayor Walid Barakat and Assistant Deputy Mayor for Digital Transformation and Technology, Mousa Almaimani, and EVOTEQ CEO Jihad Tayara about Tadweer, the digitized waste-management platform of Amana Al Madinah, powered by EVOTEQ.
How does Tadweer enhance the efficiency of Amana’s operations?
Walid: The idea behind Tadweer and other future ones is to facilitate and provide the technological tools and products Plus Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) followed by contractors’ teams to do their assigned works. The platform supports the automation of daily work procedures, which will have a huge impact on contract teams to provide services better and faster with less effort. The role of Madinah Municipality teams will be the supervision of contract works, making sure that all are done within the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) signed between Madinah Municipality and the contractors. Using such platforms will enhance and raise the level of services provided in each contract, keeping eye on the expenditure efficiency.
How was EVOTEQ’s waste management platform, Tadweer, customized to support Amana’s operations?
Jihad: EVOTEQ undertook the program with transformation and digitization in mind. We had to understand Amana’s current workflows, processes and pain points in order to deliver a bespoke solution which will not only adhere to the overall best standard practices seen the world over but will also address Amana’s exact needs. EVOTEQ is providing a fully custom platform that abides by and integrates with Amana’s many working systems in order to provide a seamless, unified journey catering to all parties involved — user, caretaker and administrator. Amana’s waste management e-Contracting is novel in that it provides not only supervisory abilities but creates a marketplace to foster transparency and competition. EVOTEQ instituted a hardened platform with audit capabilities in order to capture, process and log all underlying steps within this multi-faceted program to ensure operational and even financial compliance requirements.
With Tadweer as the waste management platform, how does Madinah Regional Municipality expect to move forward with its operations in KSA, in line with the Saudi Vision 2030?
Mousa: Madinah Regional Municipality is looking forward to mimicking its success story within Tadweer to cover all other aspects of its daily city's operational services. Madinah Regional Municipality provides many city services, such as implementing and maintaining environmental sanitation, gardens and parks, playground equipment, irrigation networks, stormwater drainage networks, street enhancement, bridges and tunnels, lighting, street and curb painting, city facility management and many more. Each of these services will have its own platform to measure and enhance the performance of these works by using innovative business models that are supported by modern technologies to leverage the true digital business transformation. All those KPIs will feed the intelligent operations center (IOC) to manage all of the city's municipal work to support the city's decision-makers and raise the quality of life, which is, by the way, one of many main objectives focused on by Vision 2023.
Can Tadweer be used in other countries and modified to meet their specific needs?
Jihad: Absolutely. EVOTEQ prides itself on developing solutions for its clients and not the other way around. In other words, we don’t look for clients that can see a benefit from our deployed solutions, but instead seek to address each client uniquely by approaching their business needs specifically. EVOTEQ’s approach is to unearth an organization’s core business values by utilizing EVOTEQ’s unique lessons learned and developed technological knowledge. Whether it's waste management or tracking the import or manufacture of goods countrywide, EVOTEQ’s approach has continued to be to assess the needs first and foremost prior to addressing them with technology.
What are Madinah Regional Municipality’s future plans in the Kingdom?
Walid: Madinah did not lose sight of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and His Crown Prince Prime Minister, Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz. There are many future plans that will transform the city into the most tranquil, generous and dynamic city in the world, delivering enriched experiences to its residents and visitors by putting technology, innovation and collaboration at the heart of Madinah City. Madinah Regional Municipality, with all other government sectors, will play a major role in executing this vision.
What are EVOTEQ’s future plans to support the Saudi Vision 2030?
Jihad: We are engaged with clients to see how best to address their needs and unlock value and efficiencies. We are in active talks about developing a City Management Platform that will take into account all Municipal needs (from inspections to permitting to complaints to integrating all municipal functions across all of its business units). EVOTEQ’s approach is to cater to the client by providing a technologically advanced solution that will help them in their day-to-day operational activities and not become an overhead burden, which becomes a hurdle itself. We are taking a modular approach to bring about configurable unit-based functionalities that would have been too difficult to customize otherwise. EVOTEQ is very excited to be a contributor to fulfilling the Kingdom’s 2030 vision.
When will the software be officially launched, and when will it be operational?
Mousa: It will be officially launched during the LEAP 2023 conference, which is held between February 6-9 in Riyadh, and it will be operational at the beginning of March 2023.
Will EVOTEQ continue to provide support in terms of platform enhancements and updates to the platform technology?
Jihad: We view technology and platforms, in particular, as a means to an end, as a remedy to a set of challenges or problems. EVOTEQ will continue to enhance its current deployed platforms, will continue to seek and develop solutions where there are none that fit a client’s exact needs and will continue to bring value irrespective of the underlying current technological status quo. EVOTEQ is technology-agnostic and will adopt and deploy the best custom-focused solution possible given its ability to address clients’ needs.
