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Palming off the doubters
A decade ago if I had moved to Dubai from Australia I don’t know whether my friends and colleagues would have been able to tell me too much about the place. “Is that in the Middle East or Asia?” “Is that a country?” But Dubai is now a global talking point, and everyone in Australia has something to say, even if some were more informed than others: “I’ve heard it’s like Hong Kong, Singapore and New York rolled into one with a modern Arabian twist”, “Are they really going to complete that palm in the sea, won’t it sink?”. Even if I was uncertain as to exactly what lay ahead, I was confident that I was coming to be part of an incredible story.
I joined Nakheel in June 2006, after five years at the Investa Property Group in Australia. During my time the company progressed from being a small property investment business into Australia’s largest listed owner of commercial property and the country’s largest homebuilder. This, combined with 30 years experience in the sector, meant I felt that I had experienced most challenges the world of real estate could throw at me. But I don’t think there is any job that could fully prepare me for the role of CEO of Nakheel. Projects such as The Palm and The World are without comparison, yet the key challenges here are exactly the things that made Dubai so appealing to me: the velocity of growth, the magnitude of the projects, and the unique blend of cultures. However, I was warned that Dubai couldn’t continue to grow and succeed at such a staggering rate, but I’ve learnt quickly that if you have the right product for the market, then the response is exceptional.
This September saw the launch of Nakheel’s Jumeirah Park project, with queues forming 12 hours before sales launched, and more than 900 properties sold in a single day. The biggest milestone for the business in 2006, however, is the delivery of the first phase of The Palm Jumeirah. The handover process of residences is scheduled to begin at the end of this year. As there are a total of 4000 villas and apartments, the handover will be phased over several months to ensure proper completion and ensure that the process is as smooth as possible. From an incoming CEO’s point of view, a project on this scale, attracting such huge international attention, could appear daunting. To create such an ambitious project is to inevitably attract challenges — there is no tried and tested template for building a palm in the sea.
But if you can’t remain excited and positive about a project like this, then you’re in the wrong job. The project is huge; larger than 800 football pitches with more than 35,000 workers currently on site, but once it is broken down into its constituent parts it essentially becomes manageable.
One thing that is perhaps more difficult to manage are the number of misconceptions about The Palm. I commonly hear the notion that it is sinking. This common misconception arose at the start of the ground improvement program. A system known as vibro-compaction was used to increase the load bearing capacity of the reclaimed land mass. This process causes the soil to vibrate vigorously, which in turn leads to very deliberate and calculated compaction and settlement; hence the apparent ‘sinking’ effect. Additional layers of soil are placed onto the ground and further compaction takes place until the final design level is obtained. The end result is a load-bearing capacity that is about twice that of mainland Dubai.
There are still many challenges ahead of us before all the phases are complete, but it is incredible to think only five years since laying the first grains of sand — when many people saw the project as an unachievable concept — that the handover of the first residences is due to begin by the end of the year. And on my next visit back to Australia, I will make sure to communicate loud and clear to my friends that The Palm is becoming a reality — and that no, it’s definitely not sinking.
Chris O’Donnell is the chief executive of Nakheel, the UAE’s largest property developer with 16 major developments, worth more than US $30 billion
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