Riyadh – Mubasher: Saudi Arabia’s megaproject Neom has announced forming a 19-member advisory board, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Tuesday.

The board will comprise experts in urban planning, architectural engineering, designing, technology, sustainability, energy, and industrialisation, the SPA added.

Neom’s board will include Norman Robert Foster, the founder and CEO of Foster + Partners, Alexandra Cousteau, a senior advisor to Oceana, and Apple’s Chief Design Officer Jonathan Ive.

The rest of members will comprise the retired Dutch politician and vice-president of the European Commission Neelie Kroes, and Andrew N. Liveris, the former CEO and chairman of Dow Chemical Company.

The board will also include the professor of Urban Technologies and Planning, and director of SENSEable City Lab Carlo Ratti, Masayoshi Son, who is SoftBank’s CEO, among others.

In April, Bechtel Group Inc. announced its interest to participate in Neom’s projects.

At the beginning of August, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz met with the Cabinet for the first time in Neom, while the kingdom hired Aradhana Khowala to be the head of the tourism sector in the project later in the same month.

In September, Neom team began conducting environmental, archaeological and geological surveys.

In October 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced his country’s plan to establish a $500 billion city in the north-west of the kingdom, named NEOM, as a part of its efforts to reduce dependence on oil revenues.

Neom is forecast to be finished by 2025, while some international investors, including Amazon.com Inc., Alibaba Group, and Airbus Group discussed previously with bin the Saudi crown prince to pump investments in Neom.

In November 2017, Russian and Saudi Arabia agreed that a Russian company will build a plant for producing ships in Neom.