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HABTOOR ENGINEERING

Abu Dhabi’s current drive to promote tourism is being assisted by Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises through the construction of the spectacular five-star Al Raha Beach Resort. Ben Smalley reports.

     Abu Dhabi’s drive to promote tourism as a means of further diversifying its economy away from oil and gas will receive a massive boost later this year when the five-star Al Raha Beach Resort opens to the public.

    The Dh 330 million project is set to transform the Al Raha Beach area into a spectacular resort, shopping and leisure destination with a five-star hotel, beach chalets, shopping mall and cinema complex - all overlooking the golden sand beaches and crystal-clear waters of the Arabian Gulf.

    The Dh 165 million contract for the construction of the project’s two main components – the hotel and shopping mall/cinema – was awarded to Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises by the Private Office of His Highness President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, with the latest contract for the external works, roads and swimming pools having also recently been awarded to the construction arm of Dubai’s Al Habtoor Group.

    The Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises team began work on the site, which is located just past the Umm Al Nar roundabout on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway, on January 6 last year under the leadership of project manager Mohammed Sadek - with the resort’s ‘soft opening’ to the public planned for this October.

    Al Raha Beach is already a popular location for families looking to escape the city on weekends and public holidays and, according to Mr Sadek, will attract even more families, as well as international tourists, when the resort becomes operational.

    “Al Raha Beach is a quiet place away from the city and a lovely place for people to spend the weekend or public holidays,” he says. “In the future it will be one of Abu Dhabi’s prime leisure destinations, reflecting the beautiful face of the emirate from a tourism perspective. As such, it is a very prestigious project to work on, and one of the biggest Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises is involved with at the moment.”

    Once complete, the five-star hotel will consist of 101 rooms and seven Royal and Diplomatic suites with a basement, ground floor and two upper floors - all spread over a total built-up area of 48,000 square metres. The hotel will also have a ballroom big enough to cater for 2,000 people, a nightclub and restaurants.

    In addition, the basement level of the hotel has parking space for around 80 cars, and there will also be a state-of-the-art health club, which will consist of a Moroccan bath, Aquamadic pool and fully equipped Jacuzzi, steam and sauna centre. The health club facilities will also include squash courts, a gymnasium and an aerobics room, while on the third floor and roof there will also be an indoor swimming pool with attached gymnasium, steam and sauna rooms.

    The shopping mall next door has a total built-up area of 30,000 square metres, consisting of a basement, ground floor - including the main entrance and lobby – retail areas on the first and second floors, which will be accessed by eight escalators and a panoramic elevator, and a two-screen cinema with a total of 288 seats for both screens. The cinema and shopping mall will both be connected via passageways to the ground floor of the hotel, while a driveway will give access from the basement parking area to the planned beach restaurants.

    In addition, the project consists of medium voltage and low voltage rooms, battery rooms, auxiliary rooms, offices and the Central Control Room, which will house all the control systems for the resort.

    A special feature of the interior of the shopping mall is its central area, which will be covered with a skylight dome. The external façade will have a stone rendered finish and curtain wall panels, while the decorative internal finishes of both buildings will be mostly pre-finish GRC.

    Mr Sadek says the construction team had to overcome a number of obstacles from the very start due to the project’s location next to the sea.

    “The first obstructions we faced when starting the piling work and the foundations were two wave breakers made of giant rocks – one at the hotel site and another at the shopping mall site – which had to be completely removed to gain the clearance and do the backfilling into the beach,” he says.

    “In certain areas we also faced massive bedding rocks below the foundation levels which had to be removed in order to drive the 75cm diameter pile casings down to the required depths of 14-16 metres, but we managed to solve these problems by bringing in a huge excavator with a 20 metre arm to dig below the foundation level and remove these huge rocks.”

At the prestigious Raha Beach Resort Development, the Project Manager Mohammed Sadek works with extremely experienced engineering team of HEE, which includes: Eng. Ayman Joubein, Construction Manager Shopping Mall Eng. Ghassan Zayed, Construction Manager Hote Eng. Saad Al Joudi, Construction Manager of the newly awarded landscaping part of the project Eng. Ghadir Farah, Project Co-ordinator Eng. Mohammed Hassan, MEP Co-ordinator

    With the hotel building extending 20 metres into the sea, and the shopping mall extending 34 metres into the water in parts, the backfilling was another major operation involving thousands of cubic metres of infilling material.

    But one of the biggest obstacles to be overcome was the short time scale for the construction work to be completed.

    “It is a challenge to achieve such a project in such a short period of time, but we have been successful in achieving the volume of work that we have in that time,” Mr Sadek says. “The hotel and shopping mall phases were due to be handed over by March 16, but many changes to the plans have been introduced and they are now expected to be complete in April.”

    The next phase involving all the external works - the contract for which was awarded to Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises two months ago - will be finished by October, while the Dh 28 million contract for the complete fit-out of the guest bedrooms, ballroom and nightclub will only be awarded in the coming weeks.

    For Mr Sadek - who joined Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises 23 years ago and has worked as project manager on developments including the Emirates International School, the Dubai Marine Beach resort in Jumeirah and the construction of 200 villas in Al Mafraq - the Al Raha Beach Resort project is a further example of the company’s contribution to the tourism industry in the United Arab Emirates.

    Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises cut its teeth in the hospitality sector with the construction in 1994 of the prestigious Holiday Centre complex on Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road, which includes an office block, shopping mall, residential apartment block and luxury hotel. Since then it has gone on to build some of Dubai’s most famous hotels – the 321 metre high Burj Al Arab (which was completed as a Joint Venture with Murray & Roberts), the 600-bedroom Jumeirah Beach Hotel, the Metropolitan Palace Hotel, the Dusit Dubai hotel and many others.

    The Dh 540 million Sheikh Rashid Terminal Concourse at Dubai International Airport is another impressive structure vital for the country’s tourism industry. It was completed by Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises as a Joint Venture with Murray & Roberts and has elevated the airport’s status to one of the most modern in the world.

    Meanwhile, Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises is also involved in the construction of other major ongoing tourism projects in the UAE, including the 50-storey Shangri-La Al Jaber Complex on Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road - which is being constructed by the Joint Venture with Murray & Roberts - and the expansive Madinat Jumeirah resort next to the Burj Al Arab.