Burj Al Salam-Team 2 (Engineers of Tomorrow)

Team 2 went to Salam Tower for three days as well, while Team 1 went to the Conrad Hotel and Abu Dhabi. Salam Tower is a mix-use building with three different towers all connected. They include residential, hotel, and office building and will also contain retail areas on the first couple floors. The first day we went on the roof and looked at the reinforcement in the post-tension slab before they poured it. And also saw how they use the machine to do the actual post-tensioning of a slab. On the roof we also saw reinforcement for the circular and rectangular columns. Inside the building we were able to see the gypsum walls and how they insulate them.
The second day we learned all of the details of laying block work. In Salam, they use a special lightweight block that is easy to break and saw through. First thing we did was draw the layout of one of the residential rooms on the concrete floor. It proved to be harder than it looked to have all of the correct dimensions and straight lines. Next, we went up to another floor and learned how to lay the blocks. The first thing you do is either put mesh of a fishtail on the wall depending on the level they alternate. Then you use mortar if a block is being laid on top of a block, but if it is touching concrete you must use both special lightweight mortar a rougher one. We were all able to shoot the gun to put the fishtail in place and every other aspect of block work from layout to aligning the blocks.
On the third day we got a more in depth tour of the residential tower and the steel car park. We watched the workers do fireproofing on the steel structure. On the roof of the car park will be a gym and roof and we watched them put this structure together as well as the casting of the roof slab. Ryan, who was an intern last year is now a site engineer on the project and took us on a brief tour where he showed many details of finishes that will be in the hotel and residential areas. We saw the beginning of mock up rooms which are built for the client to visualize what the rooms will look like. Our team greatly enjoyed our experience on this site and took away valuable information for our future.