Expert Insights from: Brian Doucette, Former COO NOMAC, 30 years of experience in desalination projects
This article is part of Infoquest’s Expert Voices series, featuring editorial insights drawn from in-depth conversations with sector professionals across the globe. Infoquest connects organizations with the specialized expertise they need to make better decisions, faster.
Saudi Arabia has poured billions into new desalination capacity. Greenfield plants are going up at a record pace, and major EPC contractors are delivering fully operational facilities in under a year. The buildout is real, and it is impressive. But speak to someone with three decades inside these systems, and a quieter, more complicated story begins to surface.
Brian Doucette has that perspective. With 30 years spanning power generation, water infrastructure, and GCC operations, including a stint as COO of NOMAC and time with GE Power and Water, he has both built and run the infrastructure that keeps the Gulf running. When Infoquest spoke with him about the desalination sector’s trajectory, he kept returning to the same point: the conversation about Saudi Arabia’s water future is focused on what is being built, when the harder question is what is already there.
“Saudi Arabia’s biggest challenge today is its aging fleet. They’re going to need to retrofit a lot of these plants.”
A Fleet Built for Another Era
Saudi Arabia scaled up its desalination capacity aggressively through the 1990s and early 2000s. That push was necessary, and it worked. But 25 to 30 years later, those same plants are showing their age. Valves degrade. Boilers fail. And the technology embedded in those facilities reflects the design standards of a generation that predates modern reverse osmosis.
The operational reality is more specific than simply deciding to upgrade. Brian points to a problem that gets little attention: the supply chain that once supported these plants has largely moved on. Manufacturers discontinue parts. Suppliers fold. Specialized components become unavailable or prohibitively expensive.
“What you find with decaying infrastructure, plants that are 30 years old, a lot of these suppliers have gone out of business. You can’t get this gasket anymore. You can’t get this valve.”
This is not a theoretical risk. It is a daily operational challenge at facilities running equipment that was never designed to last this long.
Greenfield vs. Retrofit: A More Nuanced Decision
The instinct in a capital-rich environment is to build new. And the logic is sound. Greenfield plants allow developers to incorporate renewable energy from the outset, standardize layouts, and deploy the latest membrane technology. Starting fresh means no inherited inefficiencies.
But Brian argues this framing misses something important. A plant that has been running for 25 years also has an established operational team, grid connections, water distribution links, and regulatory approvals. Replacing it entirely means rebuilding all of that context from scratch. Retrofitting, when the core infrastructure is still viable, can extend useful life by a decade or more while preserving continuity.
The condition of the boiler is often the deciding factor. In thermal desalination plants, the heat recovery steam generator is the central asset. If tube failure is extensive enough that steam generation is compromised, a retrofit may cost more than it saves.
“If there are too many tubes that are broken and you’re not generating enough steam for the desalination, then it’s likely that just replacing them is going to be quicker.”
The honest answer is that each aging plant requires its own engineering and economic assessment. Blanket greenfield preference is not a strategy. It is a shortcut.
Saudi Arabia’s Structural Advantages and Where the Risk Sits
Despite the challenges, Brian is not pessimistic about Saudi Arabia’s water security. The scale of the Public Investment Fund, the strategic prioritization of water under Vision 2030, and the execution capacity of major EPC partners mean that new capacity will continue to come online at pace.
The Kingdom’s approach is to build around the problem. Rather than treating the aging fleet as the primary challenge, it is accelerating new capacity while older plants continue to operate. If you have the capital to build fast, the opportunity cost of retrofitting legacy assets is difficult to justify.
But this creates its own risks. Skills required to maintain aging thermal plants differ from those needed for modern RO systems. As the workforce increasingly trains on newer technology, institutional knowledge of MSF and MED plant operations begins to erode. And the older plants don’t disappear. They remain on the grid, often providing baseload supply to cities and industrial zones that cannot afford interruption.
Brian also points to Saudi Arabia’s localization requirements as an ongoing friction point. The balance between local workforce development and expatriate expertise that complex operations still depend on has been a challenge for decades, and it remains one today.
What Comes Next
Over the next five to ten years, Brian expects AI-driven monitoring, predictive maintenance, and solar-powered RO systems to reshape how plants are operated and how decisions about their longevity are made. The cost per cubic meter of desalinated water has been falling, and the push to reduce it further is intensifying.
His view on sustainability is operational rather than political. His primary concern is supply chain durability. A plant built today needs a supply chain that can support it for 30 years. That means asking which components are proprietary, which suppliers will still exist in two decades, and whether the institutional knowledge to maintain the system will still be available.
In a country where water security is a strategic priority on par with energy independence, that kind of resilience is the foundation on which everything else is built. The new plants are the headline. The aging fleet is the real story.
