One week, I was ‘soaking’ up the sun, sea and sand in South Africa; the next I was ‘sweating it up’ in the sun, sea (well, sort of…….) and sand of Saudi Arabia.

After, what is turning out to be an annual pilgrimage back to South Africa for yet another wedding (not mine this time……..), it was back on a plane off to Saudi Arabia, to oversee the construction of the golf course at the King Abdullah City.

So what is King Abdullah City you ask?
Well, it’s so much more than just a property development on a massive scale. Located an hour north of Jeddah on the Red Sea coastline, the city has been Masterplanned as a modern, world-class metropolis, which will become one of the most important cities for Saudi Arabia, providing a permanent home for two million people.

The Golf Course is situated in the ‘Resort Cove’ and forms part of phase 1 of the overall construction schedule for the city.

After a particularly slow start to the Golf Course construction process (some major issues such as irrigation water, procurement of suitable materials…….etc, have had to be dealt with), work is beginning to gather some speed. Shaping is almost complete on Holes 4 and 8, and it is very pleasing to finally see the course starting to take shape…………….however, the only downside to work in Saudi Arabia is that the cool, refreshing, thirst quenching beer I had after a day in the South Africa sun building ‘sand castles’ on Camps Bay Beach, always seems a very long way away!

I get a fair bit of ribbing from my colleagues here at EGD for hardly ever being in the office and it is true, the last year has involved an extraordinary amount of travel, particularly to Bahrain, where our course at Riffa Views is very close to completion. All of us on the design staff here get to travel away from home on a regular basis, so my tale is not especially unique, nor do I find the travel particularly onerous. Indeed, the travel element of the job is one of the attractions of this career. One gets to visit so many different places, experience different cultures and cuisines and make a bunch of friends along the way from all corners of the globe. Oh, and I mustn’t forget that we get to mess about with big yellow diggers…and get paid for the pleasure!!

Anyway, the persistent heckling got me to thinking about collating just how much travelling I have done in the past 12 months and so for your perusal I present a few facts and figures from the last year. I could go on, but I’ve got to get packed up for another week long trip to Bahrain. What a rotten way to spend a working week in November!

My Travel Statistics: November 6 2007 – November 6 2008:
Total Number of Business Trips: 32

Number of Overseas Business Trips: 28

Countries Visited (excluding England):

- Bahrain 21 times

- Czech Republic 4

- Scotland 4

- Austria 2

- USA 1

Number of flights taken: 66 (44 intercontinental; 14 European; 8 UK)

Approximate Air Miles flown: 258,000

Time spent in the air: 362 hours (that’s 15.5 days!)

Time spent in airports: 132 hours (another 5.5 days!)

Days working away from the office: 141

Days working in the office: 104

Number of nights in hotels: 116

Number of different hotels: Only 8

Number of spare rooms and sofas: 3

Most consecutive number of days in the EGD office: 10

Longest business trip (in days): 8

Number of near death experiences in a Bahraini taxi: Too many to count!

Number of F1 Grand Prix attended thanks to them being within pitching distance of a project site: 1 (Bahrain). I’m working on Bernie to get him to host a race in Northern Denmark next year!

66,742: The number of words committed to print in the 21 Riffa Views Construction Reports.

?: The number of people who actually read the reports!