Trunk work

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The Tiara Hotel & Residences project covers three sides of a central podium with facilities including pools and a clubhouse.

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SHAKER: A combination of logistics and management are enabling the successful completion of the hotel and residential buildings.

MEP contractor Drake & Scull is currently undertaking three of the largest projects underway on the Palm Jumeirah in contracts worth a total of more than $272 million; common to all is the need for co-ordination and good logistics.

Golden opportunities

The Golden Mile is aptly named. Stretching for a full mile along the length of the trunk of Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, the development's Souq Residences project comprises a total of ten 13-storey buildings.

Primarily a residential development, the project is split into two stretches, with six of the interconnecting buildings located on one side of the site of the future Trump Hotel and the remaining four on the opposite side.

Drake & Scull International (DSI) won the contract for the MEP works in the Souq Residences in competitive tender and the project is now well underway, with the first commissioning of services due to begin this summer.

The project will be completed in phases, with each building handed over individually.

Services solutions

MEP services for the project have in general been divided into five, with a set of basement plantrooms each feeding two adjacent buildings, explains DSI operations manager Naser Yaseen.

A total of 12,500TR of cooling is provided via the Palm District Cooling chilled water network that serves the overall Palm Jumeirah development. This is evenly distributed across the project, again with five dedicated stations serving the ten buildings.

The chilled water is distributed by a series of risers to a total of around 100 air handling units (ahu), with local air conditioning within the apartments being provided by fan coil units.

These methods were chosen to match the layout of the buildings, explains Yaseen.

The total 37MW electrical load will be provided by seven substations that have varying loads according to the building demands.

Four substations comprise six 1,500kVA transformers; one has four 1,500kVA transformers; the others have two 1,500kVA units.

Distribution from the main electrical rooms is by a combination of cables and busbar, depending on location and the distance to the local distribution boards. For example, if the main electrical room serving buildings one and two is sited under building one, then distribution to building one will be via cables, and busbar will be used to supply power to building two.

Co-ordinating works

The primary challenge for the services installation on the project is the sheer scale and the co-ordination that this requires. Yaseen explains: "The total area [of the project] is unusual and the total spread of area - to travel from building one to ten takes a lot of time - so it's basically logistics that's the biggest challenge."

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