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With so much material spread over such a huge site, there may have been serious problems and delays. However, through forward planning and easy communication between contracts ASGC and themselves, ASU seems to have it under control.

MEP construction manager on the project, Hossam Al-Bishbishy, reveals: "With the materials, from day one we have done planning to procure it on time on site.

So we started planning at an early stage to get approval from the engineers on the materials and arrange the delivery of the procurement to be on time on the site."

El Wakil adds: "So far we are not facing any kind of lack of materials. For the labour as well we are coping with the progress on site. So far things are going smooth but it needs to be double or triple or more than on a regular job because we are working on so many buildings at one time."

Switchgears for the project consist in total of more than 1,300db and more than 160km of cable has been used while hooking up the electrical systems. Seven substations are supplying the development and there are also seven standby generators for the site.

The hotel will boast a complicated electrical system in each room including a home automation control in each room. These systems will be capable of controlling everything within the room including the curtains.

Despite this ASU claim that the hotel will not pose a bigger challenge than the rest of the buildings, but do admit that it could be slightly delayed compared to the rest of the development. El Wakil reveals: "It's not really a question of it being harder, this project is supposed to be completed in July 2009, including the hotel also. Maybe the hotel will be a little bit delayed till November or something."

Plumbing plant

Plumbing on the project has been challenging in the way that all of the other components of the MEP work has - the sheer size of it. El Wakil describes the work being done: "Talking about plumbing, we have a domestic water supply that consists of underground reservoirs of more than 1,000,000 gallons, pumped through 17 pump sets. Each set consists of four pumps, three on duty and one on standby.

With the drainage system we have a network of piping almost 51,000m we have 19 sets of submersible pumps."

The buildings are located only 1km away from Sheikh Zayed Road and will have a water attraction running past them. The water will just be standing water and will not be connected to the nearby extended creek. While work on the site is progressing well, El Wakil is the first to admit it hasn't been easy: "We are working on 13 projects here at the same time.

If you consider each building as a project then we have 13 subprojects so the challenge comes from providing the necessary resources, I mean labour, materials and all these things to be provided at the same time to serve the construction work that is going on all over the 13 buildings. And coping with all the necessary challenges to complete the project on date has been hard."

Business Bay is set to become one of Dubai's greatest commerce attractions, and it is ambitious developments such as Bay Square that will ensure its ambitions are fulfilled.

The sheer scale of this project would be daunting to many companies and there is a definite advantage here to ASU being part of the Al Shafar Group. Easy communication, sharing of resources and forward planning has ensured that the project, as of yet, has run smoothly.

It is rare that an MEP company is so directly linked with the contractor on a site but this case is a perfect example of the need for communication on the site. It comes easy in this case, and for good reason, but any MEP contractor about to embark on a large project such as this can see why working together with all parties is worthwhile - it makes perfect business sense.

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