Understanding ARAMCO's PWAS Mandate
Saudi Aramco's General Instruction GI-7.030 mandates that all construction and heavy industry operations within Aramco facilities must deploy approved Proximity Warning & Alert Systems (PWAS) on all heavy equipment. This requirement has become a benchmark for safety compliance across Saudi Arabia's industrial sector, and contractors who cannot demonstrate compliance are routinely turned away at site gates.
Key Requirements Under GI-7.030
The specification requires that PWAS systems must detect personnel within 5-10 meters of heavy machinery, provide immediate audible and visual alerts to both operators and workers, log all proximity events with GPS coordinates and timestamps, and undergo quarterly third-party verification.
How does GI-7.030 differ from GI-2.100?
The two instructions are complementary, not interchangeable. GI-7.030 governs proximity-warning and anti-collision technology fitted directly to heavy equipment and vehicles. GI-2.100, Aramco's journey-management instruction, governs how land-transport trips themselves are planned, authorised, and monitored end-to-end — route risk assessment, driver fitness checks, and journey tracking. A contractor working inside Aramco facilities typically needs to demonstrate compliance with both: equipment fitted with an approved PWAS, and trips run under an approved journey-management plan.
How SNTech's PWAS Meets Every Requirement
SNTech's PWAS product line has been specifically engineered and certified to exceed ARAMCO's GI-7.030 requirements. Our AI-based visual recognition system, combined with radar backup and optional UWB tag-based detection, provides a multi-layer safety solution that has achieved zero LTI (Lost Time Incident) records at multiple ARAMCO project sites, including 18 consecutive months of zero LTIs across 45 pieces of heavy equipment at a Tier-1 EPC contractor's Jubail expansion project.
Preparing for a PWAS Compliance Audit
Aramco's quarterly third-party verification checks three things in practice: that every detection zone is correctly calibrated for the equipment it's mounted on, that proximity events are being logged with accurate GPS and timestamp data (not just triggered but recorded), and that operators can produce alert history on demand. Contractors preparing for their first audit should budget time for a pre-audit calibration pass rather than assuming factory settings will pass inspection on every site — dust accumulation, vibration, and equipment modifications can all drift a sensor's detection zone over months of operation.
Getting Certified
SNTech's technical team handles the full GI-7.030 submission package for clients — detection-zone documentation, calibration certificates, and the event-logging evidence Aramco's auditors expect to see — so your equipment can be site-ready without your team having to interpret the specification from scratch.
Which PWAS Technology Fits Your Equipment?
GI-7.030 sets the requirement, but it doesn't mandate a single detection method — and the right choice depends on the machine and the site. AI-based visual recognition uses a camera and an edge processor to classify people and vehicles entering a danger zone, with detection ranges up to 15 metres and response latency under 200 milliseconds; it is the most precise at telling a person apart from an object, but like any camera it works less reliably in dust storms or direct low-angle sun. Radar-based PWAS — available as a 180° front-facing unit for excavators and bulldozers, or a 360° full-perimeter system built from four radar units for large cranes and port equipment — works identically in total darkness, dust, and glare, at ranges up to 30 metres, because it doesn't depend on visible light. UWB tag-based detection takes a different approach entirely: personnel wear a tag, machines carry an anchor, and the system tracks sub-10cm positioning with a 12-month tag battery life, which is the only method that reliably locates a worker indoors or underground. For sites that need to eliminate ghost alerts and produce legally admissible incident data, SNTech's combo system fuses all three — radar for range, AI vision for classification, and UWB for identity — into a single event record showing who, when, and how far.
Matching the Technology to the Risk
In practice, most Aramco and NEOM sites end up specifying radar as the baseline (it never fails in bad weather), AI vision where classification accuracy matters most — around active pedestrian walkways — and UWB tags for confined or underground work where cameras and radar both lose line of sight. Getting this mix wrong is the most common reason a PWAS deployment fails its first compliance audit: a camera-only system installed on equipment that regularly operates in dust will generate exactly the kind of missed-detection gap GI-7.030's quarterly verification is designed to catch.
