Week 3: Day 3

Tuesday June 1, 2010

Team 1: Ariyana (2Y) Tower

Today the Pinnacle Engineers Team headed off to the Dubai Marina to see our third in-progress site, Ariyana Tower. The tower consists of three basement levels, a ground floor, 33 floors, and the roof level. The cost of the tower is estimated to be 225 million AED and have duration of 25 months. The structure of the building is complete and it is in finishing stages of both the interior and exterior. The building will be complete in October 2010 and will be used for residential apartments and four retail stores. When arriving to the site we learned about the basic layout of the building and site and then had tours of the mock-up apartments. Each floor has four apartments, three of which are two bedroom apartments and one is a three-bedroom apartment. All apartments include the basic kitchen appliances, cabinets, bathroom fixtures, wardrobe cabinets, and laundry facilities, these items are included to meet the high quality and standards of any DCC project and can be found in any of their projects prior to handover.

The Ariyana Tower has a unique façade design, and during the visit we learned about the different methods to apply the gypsum reinforced concrete, curtain walling, and glass cladding. The Project Manager, Mr. Mazen Hallak, spoke to us and showed us throughout the tour of the building about the importance of waterproofing, and we were able to see the different techniques used for balconies, pools, bathrooms, and windows. After a general tour of the tower, we went with one of the Quality Assurance and Control Engineers to the roof to see the electro-mechanical floor and learn about the different inspections that are made to make sure the walls are plumb, safety measures that are being taken, and that the construction of the building is to code. It was fascinating to learn about the intricate details that are so essential to the construction process.

Team 2:Rolex Tower and Al Manara Villa

Team 2, MECA Engineering, went to two sites, Rolex Tower and Al Manara Villa. Both of these sites are in finishing stages and Rolex has sample apartments including two penthouses.

Rolex Tower

Project Scope:

• Rolex Tower is a residential and office tower with a separate car park building linked by a bridge


• Owner: Ahmed Seddiqi and Sons


• Architects/Designers: Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill (SOM).


• Consultants: ERGA Progress, Chawla Architects


• Main Contractor: DCC


• Built-up Area: 52,476 square meters


• Duration: 27 months


• Project Cost: About 400 Million Dhs


• Height: 246 meters


• Project Description:

1-     Parking Building: 4B + G + 9 Floors

2-     Rolex Tower: B + G + M + 62 Floors

Tour:

We were given a tour by Mr. Subrahmanyam the official project manager of the tower.  We started off in the parking building, where we saw the ground floor and first floor, and then went on the bridge that connects the parking building to the first floor of the tower.

At the end of the bridge, there are two different entrances to the tower, separating the offices from the apartments. Entering from the residential entrance, a person cannot go into the other part due to a glass wall that separates them.  There are six office lifts, three residential lifts, and one service lift.

Then Mr. Subrahmanyam showed us the different types of floors in the tower, consisting of office, residential, penthouse, mechanical and technical floors.

From the 1^st to the 31^st floor there are office floors (2 offices per floor)

From the 34^th to the 56^th floor there are residential apartments

The mechanical floors are the 32^nd, 33^rd, 61^st and 62^nd floors

The technical floors are the 57^th and 58^th floors

Finally, the two penthouses are on the 60^th and 61^st floors

The slabs of the tower are all hollow-core slabs, except those of the mechanical floors due to the heavier weight.  The main purpose of using these slabs is that they reduce the unused sections of the concrete.  All staircases of the tower until the 33^rd floor are pre-cast concrete, and on that floor there is a transfer beam to transfer the load coming from the above structure to the columns because the building narrows down.

Curtain wall is the external finish consists of fritted glass panels. Some panels are spotted and some other are not spotted from inside.  The interior finishes include ceramic tiles with skirting, marble, emulsion paint, wood paneling.

The Rolex Tower is in finishing stages and mock-up apartments have been made to show potential buyers what they can expect. The apartments include a one and two bedrooms as well as the two penthouses. The finishing details in the apartments were incredible, an attention to detail and great views make these Rolex apartments extraordinary. The penthouse on the 61^st floor has a bathroom with unrivaled views of the World Islands and a bedroom that overlooks Burj Khalifa’s fountain, famous for its night time shows.

Al Manara Villa

Project Scope:

• Project Name: Private Villa for Mr. Hassan Yabroudi


• Owner: Mr. Hassan Yabroudi


• Architects/Designers: LAB Archtecture (Exterior), Claude Mezher (Interior)


• Consultants: ERGA Progress


• Main Contractor: DCC


• Built-up Area: 1815 square meters


• Duration: 16 months (with extension)


• Project Cost: 19,750,000 Dhs


• Plot Size: 30x40 square meters


• Project Description: B + G + 1 Floors

Tour:

We were given a tour by Mr. Mazen Hallak (Projects Coordination Manager), to see the different partition of the villa. First we visited the ground floor, which has an area of 500 square meters, consisting of a sitting room, a guest bedroom, dining room, studying room, a pantry and access to the outdoor swimming pool.

Next, we went to the first floor of the villa, having an area of 500 square meters.  It is formed of a sitting room, a pantry, three normal bedrooms with their own bathroom and a master bedroom which takes up almost half of the floor!

Finally, we went down to the basement level.  It has an area of 800 square meters.  This floor consists of the main kitchen, two mechanical rooms, a theater room, a gym and an extra storage room.  It also has access to the underground parking area, where the ground is made of cobblestone pieces, 5 cm think and carefully selected one by one.

What make the villa unique are the amazing finishes. Some of the finishes include: Grey Markira (Marble with white material), granite tiles with flamed finishing, honed finishing, mat finishing (concept of the whole villa), special paint on bathroom walls, glazing around the courtyard, mosaic finishing in bathrooms and pool, camara stone and others. 

In the afternoon, both teams went to e-Construct, a pre-cast structural design company, where we had a couple lectures about different pre-cast projects they have worked on in the UAE. The first project was a coal storage warehouse in Sharjah, where e-Construct used pre-cast reinforced concrete beams that spanned up to 50 meters! The beams were post-tensioned and designed with a concrete truss, to learn about the design analysis and production of these beams was unreal. This type of pre-cast concrete is very rare, especially for such a large span and project, and it was interesting to learn about the challenges and techniques that were used to accomplish the project. We also had a lecture about a new development to be used for office space and residential apartments called the Dubai Pearl. The Dubai Pearl is four, 73 story, towers connected at the top by four stories that will consist of “sky palaces”. The raft foundation for the project is 3.25 meters thick and took 36 hours of constant pumping to place the concrete. We also learned about how value engineering was applied to the project, and how they adjusted the floor system, columns, beams, and lateral stability to reduce the total cost.