Site Visit to Conrad hotel – Team 1

This morning we had a site visit to one of DCCs biggest projects which is the Conrade hotel. This hotel is being built to become a seven star hotel when completed. There we were welcomed by Mr. Ibrahim Amara who is a site engineer where he gave a small briefing about the site. The owner of this site is PPM (Private Properties Management) and its main consultant is SRSS (Smallwood Reynolds Stewart & Stewart). With a contact value of about 1.1 billion AED, this project has 2 main contractors which are DCC and Arabtec who formed a Joint Venture for this project.

The tower consists of 3 basements, ground floor, 2 mezzanine floors and 50 floors followed by a steel structure on top. Mr. Amara explained that the foundation used for this building was a raft foundation with piles and secant piles were used for shoring. Before starting the tour, we had a safety induction where the safety officer indicated the risks we might encounter and clarified few safety issues.

We started the tour by checking the car park building. This car park is the specialty of this tower because it is being built to become the first fully automated car park in the Middle East. But this specialty was a source of delay for the project because it took a long time to receive approval. The most interesting part of the visit was when we went to the 50th floor using the hoist. Another nice aspect of the project was the truss system which was used in the mezzanine floors to insure large spans.

At the end of the tour we saw a video which showed the hotel in its final shape with the interior decorations.