Wednesday, May 25th 2011 (Team 1)

Salam Tower and Introduction to Tendering

Today, Team 1 attended a construction site visit of the Burj Al Salam building which is a multi-use tower with an adjacent carpark building. The main tower will be functional as a Sheraton Hotel, work offices and residential area. The Hotel and Residential parts of the tower will be four basement levels, ground level, loft level and 54 stories (4B+G+L+54 floors), while the office tower will be 4G+G+L+50 floors. The adjacent car park will be four basement levels, ground, and 12 stories. This project is currently under construction headed by the Dubai Contracting Company after taking over the project from a previous contractor. The consultant is CHAWLA Architectural & Consulting Engineers alongside ERGA Progress Engineering Consultants, who are leading the majority of the design. The project is expected to be completed by April 2013 with a contract duration of 31 months (943 days) including 1 month for mobilization. The contract value for this project is an estimated 230 million US and is expected to double following fitting, equipment and finishes needed for the Hotel and residential area.
Our visit began with a basic overview of the project provided by the project coordinator, Mr. Mazen Hallak, who provided our team with comprehensive project data including, but not limited to, plot contract values, total build up areas for both tower and car park building. Following the overview Mr. Hallak was kind enough to provide us with a quick tour of the DCC main project offices on site, which are temporary spaces that will be deconstructed and disassembled upon completion. The site office tour showed offices of the Project Manager, Site Engineer, QAQC Engineer, Project Engineer, MEP Coordinators and Site-Project Engineer as well as a sample and discussion room, document control room and staff mess. Before touring the construction floor, we attended a health and safety induction which provided us with an idea of what to do in case of an emergency. The tour of the construction site was conducted by local Site Engineer Mr. Ryan Bistany. We began the tour by taking the hoist from ground level to level twenty one and worked our way down through several floors which allowed us to view the progress of the work being done floor by floor. Mr. Bistany provided a particularly thorough description of the work being conducted from block work, shuttering/formwork layout, to the bonding rush coat laid on the walls followed by plaster. It was interesting to see the progression of construction from the lower floors which already had been outfitted with MEP utilities, electrical conduits and plaster work and the higher floors which were still in the early block work and layout stages. Another thing to note was the cleanliness and organization of the site. All signage was clear and concise and construction materials were placed in an organized manner in order for the workers to be as efficient as possible. This site visit provided Team 1 with a clear indication of the quality and efficiency present in a typical DCC construction site as well as invaluable information of construction work detailing.

In the afternoon we were provided with an Introduction to Tendering lecture provided by Mr. Chris Battle, DCC Commercial Manager. We learned that the main objectives of tendering are to enable the employer to secure a suitable contractor to carry out the intended works at a competitive price and to provide a level platform for the participating tenderers to understand the requirements of the intended works and the various risks involved in carrying out the works before deciding on their tender bid price. The tender process includes the pre-qualification phase, the tender invitation phase, the tender clarifications and addenda phase, the tender bid submission phase, the tender opening and tender clarification phase, the award phase and the formalization of contract phase. This lecture provided us with a clear description of the process of tendering.