Going up downtown

A visit to a crane installation on a project in Jebel Ali reveals some large TCs as well as exemplary health and safety practices.

Working safely, particularly where there are cranes involved is a subject which we all talk about – but it is clear there are still too many operators who don’t do lift plans and who take many risks. At the time of writing, we’ve just had a report of the boom on a fifty tonne all terrain crane collapsing with a tragic result. Meanwhile, one of our staff photographers has just seen another mobile crane collapse due to an unplanned lift and elsewhere in this month’s print issue, you might have read how an argument actually up a crane summarily resulted in death.

It was nice then, to visit a site where the very strictest standards of health and safety are implemented, and the tower cranes were all bought brand new for the project.

First, it is interesting to learn a bit about the project itself. Downtown Jebel Ali was conceived as a mixed use commercial and residential development, overlooking but not actually in the freezone. Despite the industrial-sounding nature of the project, the original master plan shows a light and spacious complex of some 326 buildings, connected by airy pedestrian boulevards, both above and below ground level.

Part of the guiding principle behind it was that people who lived and worked in the building wouldn’t need to rely on a car for their day to day affairs as the development would not only be walkable, but served by an internal transport system, as well as having its own Metro station.

Rolling

The project is still rolling forward, despite the downturn. Admittedly the workforce has been cut and the schedules revised, but the first (of four) quarters are taking shape, with a group of commercial buildings almost complete, while a line of towers are topped out.

The master developer is local firm Limitless while Al Habtoor Leighton, Bovis and Taisei Corporation are contractors in charge of the commercial buildings, project management and main contractors respectively. It is the HSE department of Taisei Corp. whom we are visiting today, as they work on the bank of towers.

After being suitably kitted out with safety glasses and a hard hat, we went through the sectioned off walkways as this site has areas for walking divided from the site traffic. On entering the building itself, it is nice to see that this contractor has been using the animations from Build Safe UAE.

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