The Shangri-La is the latest luxury five-star hotel to open in Dubai, further strengthening the emirate’s position as the leading business and tourism centre in the region. For the Joint Venture between Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises and Murray & Roberts, the construction of the hotel and associated apartment and office facilities is another major achievement for the UAE’s leading construction partnership. Ben Smalley reports.

    After just two years of construction, the Shangri-La hotel, apartment and office complex on Dubai’s Sheikh Zayed Road was officially opened in July, adding another landmark building to the city’s skyline.

    As leading figures from the region’s hospitality industry marked the opening of the five star luxury hotel at a function hosted by owner Obeid Al Jaber, the occasion marked another major accomplishment for the Joint Venture between Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises and South Africa-based Murray & Roberts.

    The 47-storey Al Jaber Complex is just the latest stunning building to be completed by the construction partnership, adding to its formidable portfolio of prestige projects in Dubai.

    “When you construct a landmark building like this, the whole team feels a sense of pride and accomplishment,” said project director Nasr A. Nasr. “This was an extremely challenging project because of its sheer volume and size, the quality of finish required and the tight period which we had to construct the building in, which was only two years.”

    Work on the complex started on 19 May 2001 and, at peak, employed around 3,500 people, reaching a height of 200 meters at a cost of some 350 million dirhams.

    Floors 29 to 43 house the Hong Kong-based Shangri-la Hotel group’s first property outside the Asia Pacific region, with 300 rooms in total, comprising 27 single executive suites, eight executive suites, 242 standard rooms, 22 suites and one Presidential suite.

    The complex also has 126 furnished apartments and 62 unfurnished apartments. Among the furnished apartments, there are 16 three-bedroom and the same number of two-bedroom apartments, 92 studios and one-bedroom apartments. The unfurnished segment has four four-bedroom apartments, 28 three-bedroom apartments, 14 two-bedroom and 16 one-bedroom apartments.

    Levels one to four have restaurants, a business center, health club and hotel support services. The furnished and unfurnished apartments are housed from levels 12 to 28, and offices occupy levels five to eight. The whole complex has 20 lifts in all.

    “The elevation of the building is unlike any other on Sheikh Zayed Road,” said Nasr, who was handpicked to oversee the project as its director, along with a highly experienced team of engineers headed by Grahame Waite as project manager. “The external elevation of the complex alternates between projecting strips of granite cladding immediately followed by recessed curtain walling so there is a unique elegance to the building deceiving its concrete and steel heart.

    “The 24,000 square metres of granite slabs on the exterior of the building were all laid by hand like a giant jigsaw puzzle. We sourced the granite from Brazil and went to inspect the quarry there. It was shipped from there to Italy where the slabs were processed and cut, and from there they were shipped to Dubai.”

    The whole building is a reinforced concrete tube structure with in-situ slabs to level four, above which there are pre-cast slabs. The car park consists of reinforced concrete columns with a flat slab structure. A service tunnel from basement four connects to the lower basement at level two and there is also a bridge from level eight of the car park to level four of the tower.

    In total, the project utilised 17,000 metric tones of reinforced steel, 70,000 cubic meters of concrete, over 21,000 square metres of glazing, 1.1 million hollow blocks and formwork over 200,000 square metres.

    “The complex has achieved many firsts in the UAE,” Nasr said. “For instance we have used one of the biggest hydraulic self-climbing form work systems in the world for the first time in the UAE, but the first major milestone was the construction itself – we managed to construct an entire floor in four days which was a major achievement. We also managed to complete seven million man hours without any loss due to injuries which is a reflection of our safe approach and the degree to which we treat safety seriously.”

    Having commenced at the start of a supposed downturn in the building development in local projects, Shangri-La finishes as Dubai is riding the wave of a series of massive developments either just starting or soon coming off the drawing board.

    “We have not seen any slowdown yet,” Nasr said. “Big projects have definitely not suffered, and we are still bidding for many projects.”

    Nasr should know. He has been at the helm of many of Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises’ sterling projects during his long stint of 23 years in the local construction industry, the last 10 of which have been with the Dubai-based company.

    “Such an accomplishment as the Al Jaber Complex is the result of teamwork – from the Joint Venture board and senior management down,” he said. “It again proves that for the Joint Venture between Al Habtoor Engineering Enterprises and Murray & Roberts nothing is impossible.”

    The joint venture evolved in 1994 and the two companies have partnered many challenging construction projects in the UAE ever since.  One of them is of course the Burj Al Arab, which rises 321 metres from the blue waters of the Arabian Gulf which surround it, making it the world’s tallest hotel.

    “We complement each other in management and style,” Nasr said. “We utilise both of our resources to the full extent. Being a prominent player in the UAE, Al Habtoor Engineering has local knowledge and expertise which combines with the expertise of Murray &Roberts.”

    The timing of the opening of the complex positions Shangri-La perfectly to coincide with the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund which take place in Dubai at the end of September.

    With more than 14,000 delegates attending the meetings, including the finance ministers and central bank chiefs from all 184 member countries of the World Bank and the IMF, as well as senior business and financial leaders from across the globe, the hotel will be host to a number of high profile visitors demonstrating the dynamism of Dubai’s ever-increasing hospitality sector.