Dubai’s building boom
Biggest, best and most beautiful. With artificial islands, spectacular hotels and enormous recreation and shopping complexes, Dubai is focusing firmly on becoming the world’s centre for commerce and luxury tourism. And it’s resulting in a building boom unlike anything the world has ever seen before.
H
izbullah miradam floors the accelerator. He’s in a hurry, as always in Dubai these days. The colourful Pakistani curtains in the windscreen swing along with the loud music from the stereo as his white Volvo FH12 gets under way with a jerk.
“The traffic is the worst,” he says, pointing to the motorway that looms a few hundred metres further on: endless rows of cars that restlessly crawl along in a fog of exhaust fumes and thick, sun-speckled road dust.
“If only I had an open road this would be the best job in the world because I love my truck and the freedom it gives me,” continues Hizbullah and fires off a resounding laugh that drowns out the stereo inside the cab and the cacophony of car horns outside.
Hizbullah Miradam is 30 years old, born and raised in Peshawar in Pakistan, but he’s been driving trucks in Dubai since he was 19. He is admittedly accustomed to congested traffic from back home, he says, but adds that nothing can compete with the complete standstill that sometimes plagues Dubai’s hectic centre nowadays.
Facts, Dubai National Transport
■ A haulage company that is part of the Al Bakhit Corporation.
■ Transports sand, crushed stone and concrete for its only customer, sister company Unimix.
■ Has 68 trucks in its fleet, all Volvo FH12s. 60 of them are tipper-semitrailers, the remainder are bulk-semitrailers for cement.
■ Each truck covers about 240,000 kilometres a year. No vehicle is more than three years old and all are covered by full service agreements.
■ 100 employed drivers, corresponding to 1.3 per truck.
“The authorities are trying to get to grips with the traffic problem, for instance by building a metro train system to cut through the entire city. But what’s the point, the traffic just continues to grow all the time! It feels as though the whole world has come to Dubai!” says Hizbullah and shrugs his shoulders in a sign of helplessness. We crawl along the last few kilometres of the route that he covers twice a day. His truck is hauling sand and crushed stone that he has fetched from a quarry in the neighbouring emirate of Ras al- Khaimah, about a hundred or so kilometres east of Dubai.
His employer, haulage company Dubai National Transport, is a leading supplier to Dubai’s hard-working concrete industry. He will soon unload his cargo at one of the thirteen mobile concrete factories that the corporation has established at building sites throughout the city.
The destination for today’s trip is the “Jumeirah Palm” – an artificial island that is taking shape some way off Dubai’s built-up coast. It is one of the most spectacular construction projects in the world right now: seventy million cubic metres of sand have been poured into the sea, massaged into the contours of a gigantic palm tree and crowned with more than 1400 luxury villas, 2200 apartments, several marinas and large luxury hotel complexes. Everything is scheduled to be ready by the end of the year. Some of the world’s foremost celebrities have already announced their intention to move in when the gates are thrown open in a few months’ time.
And bearing in mind that the Jumeirah Palm is by far the smallest of the total of four artificial islands being built along the coast, it’s easy to see that what is taking shape in Dubai is truly extraordinary.
What they are doing is to invest for the future. The little oil we have is already beginning to run out, so we’re going flat-out to transform Dubai into a world-leading centre for commerce and luxury tourism instead,” says Khalid Mohammed Bakhit, chairman of the Al Bakhit Corporation, a local construction and haulage giant that includes Dubai National Transport. He mentions in passing some of the projects that are currently in the construction phase: Waterfront, an entirely new city-within-the-city planned to be seven times larger than Manhattan; Dubailand, the world’s largest recreational complex with six theme parks, each of which is bigger than Disneyland in Florida; Burj Dubai which at a height of more than 700 metres is set to be easily the tallest building in the world; the artificial islands, the biggest and most demanding of which, “The World”, encompasses 264 islands in the shape of a map of the world. It is being constructed four kilometres off the Dubai coast – a construction project that will naturally be visible from the moon when it is completed next year.
So if you were to say that “there’s construction going on everywhere” you’d be guilty of something of an understatement. But still: Dubai is literally being redrawn from the ground up. Rumour has it that 25 percent of the world’s total fleet of cranes is on site right here, right now.
And in the midst of it all, Dubai National Transport’s trucks dart around delivering the very backbone for the emerging new skyline: concrete. The company’s sole customer is Unimix, a sister company within the corporation. It is Unimix’s unique concrete that is used for the most spectacular and demanding construction projects in the city.
“We’ve carved out a niche for ourselves by taking only the most challenging projects. There’s less competition there,” says Khalid Bakhit, and continues:
“What is more, we’re the only company able to supply concrete that is sufficiently strong, durable and elastic to function as a suitable material for the enormously tall buildings that are being built here right now.”
And there’s absolutely no arguing about the strength of Unimix’s concrete. With a strength factor of more than a ton per square centimetre, it is more than 30 percent stronger than anything the competition can come up with. Furthermore, the company’s marine concrete, which is used in the tunnel leading out to the Jumeirah Palm where Hizbullah Miradam delivers his load every day, is entirely water-repellent, which makes it highly suitable for underwater construction operations.
The Dubai National Transport fleet includes 68 trucks, all bearing the Volvo FH12 badge. Most of them have tipper semitrailers to haul the sand and crushed stone from Ras al-Khayma, but the company also has eight bulk-semitrailers for transporting cement. In addition, they recently placed a fresh order for ten new trucks. As the construction industry booms, the company expands almost daily.
“Things are going very well indeed right now. For us it is therefore essential to have only the very best equipment for all we undertake,” says Khalid Bakhit, and explains:
“If one of our trucks grinds to a halt, an entire construction site risks being without concrete. On a market where everyone wants everything done yesterday, you can just imagine what problems that would cause!”
The solution is new trucks. According to Dubai National Transport’s policy, no truck is allowed to be more than three years old, all so as to be sure it really can deliver, whatever the conditions. The company also has full-scale service agreements for all its trucks with the country’s Volvo importer, Al Futtaim Auto and Machinery Company, Famco.
“We have chosen to stick solely with Volvo since this is the most reliable truck on the market. Our trucks are on the move 24 hours a day, often hauling more than 80 tonnes of crushed stone in dusty quarries with many steep gradients, so believe me, the stress is enormous. In such conditions, only the best will do,” says Khalid Bakhit.
“Having said all that, we can never be sure how long the boom will continue. With Volvo we get trucks with good second-hand value,” he continues.
At the other end of the city, Hizbullah Miradam is getting steadily closer to his destination. With stoic patience he has piloted his rig through the city, out to the gigantic construction site that is currently the Jumeirah Palm.
No outsiders are admitted through the gates to the island for security reasons, so we have to bid each other goodbye here. As I leave Hizbullah’s bouncing cab, he calls out to me:
“The world’s largest construction site,” he says with a laugh and points with one arm through the window towards the horizon. With his other arm he indicates his truck’s instrument panel:
“And the world’s best truck. Get it?”
I reply that I get it, and I step down onto the ground. At that very moment Hizbullah floors the accelerator and his white truck disappears in a cloud of thick, sunlit road dust. Hanging in the air is a faint echo of Pakistani music that quickly drowns in the ocean of sound that washes over the spot where I am standing. ■
Facts, Dubai
■ One of seven emirates in a federation known as the United Arab Emirates.
■ Population of around 1.5 million, of which no less than 80 percent consists of foreign labour.
■ Covers an area of 3885 square kilometres at the very tip of the Arabian Peninsular on the Persian Gulf.
■ The second-largest and most important emirate in the UAE after Abu Dhabi. Unlike Abu Dhabi, however, Dubai has almost no oil of its own. Only six percent of Dubai’s GDP comes from oil. Instead, the economy is based on commerce and luxury tourism. For instance, Dubai is one of the world’s leading centres for the gold trade. With its low taxation and strategic location, Dubai is also a regional centre for many of the world’s largest multinational companies.