The Al Majaz Island Project in Sharjah is due for completion in March 2014

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Last year, Sharjah was named the Capital of Islamic Culture for 2014, in recognition of its contributions towards ‘preserving, promoting and disseminating culture at local, Arab and Islamic levels’. As a result of being awarded the title, the UAE’s third largest emirate has decided to launch a series of projects to celebrate the event.

First amongst these will be the Al Majaz Island project, which is set to be the official venue of the Sharjah Capital of Islamic Culture 2014 celebrations. At the centre of the $38.1 million artificial island is an open-air amphitheatre, which is set to be the first of its kind in the region.

Early in December 2013, magazine was invited by the Sharjah Media Centre, the implementers of the project, to visit the construction site of the 7,238sqm amphitheatre and its accompanying access bridge, which will link it to Khalid Lagoon Street.

Scheduled to be completed by February 2014, the pressure to complete the project on time is immense, says Saleem Saada, project manager for the Government of Sharjah’s Directorate of Public Works.

“There’s a team that needs time to start (the planning) for the show,” he explains. “The contractor is promising he’ll finish by the 15^th of February. He’s doing precast moulding in his factory and they’re working full time there. The buildings are, let’s say, 70% ready. The people will work day and night on the project and we’re trying to push them to finish before the 15^th of February, because the other teams will need time to practice their show, and they need to inspect the place and the site, because it’s going to be a big, unique show.”

Part of a $74.32 million development of the area, the amphitheatre, manmade island and bridges connecting the two to the mainland, will all have to be built within 90 days, the chairman of the executive committee for Sharjah’s Islamic Culture Capital organisation, Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qasimi, said.

“We have discussed with the contractors and they have agreed to deliver the project on time and with a lot of efficiency,” he told a local newspaper late last year.

So it’s clearly that time is of the essence and the pressure is on, given that the first show is pencilled in for March 2014. However, if Jawdat Barqawi, Emirates Stone’s general manager, is feeling the pressure, he’s hiding it pretty well.

“We are working 24 hours a day in the factory itself, in order to prepare all the precast elements. As well as the design team, we’ve made extended shifts for them, in order to prepare the design drawings for the factory,” the GM of the firm organising the precast works for the amphitheatre says.

“On site, we’ve also made them extend the shift work as well, till midnight. That’s the plan as we’ve made it, in order to finish on schedule, and hopefully we’ll make it, but I feel the plan may extend by a couple of weeks,” he confides.

“Definitely, when we come to the stage of finishing (on site), we’ll work shifts here to 24 hours. The man power that we have here, we can work two to three shifts to complete the project.”

“We’re used to fast-track projects, we’ve been doing them for 20 years, projects like this, and so we’re used to it. When a job is required to be done in a few months, we plan ourselves to do it. We’ve done similar projects in Kalba and Khorfakkan, which were done in a short time,” Barqawi reiterates.

“What we’re doing is working in parallel with design, production and erection. Till now, there is work going on in the design office. This is because our project contains more than 1,500 elements. The whole project is broken into elements and each element has to be studied in order to not have any problems later on, when we erect it,” he adds.

The $32.6 million amphitheatre has been designed in the open-air Roman-style style, and will include several terraced seating areas that can accommodate up to 4,500 spectators. Furthermore, there will be a centre stage which will be equipped with state of the art audio systems.

In addition, the amphitheatre will have conference rooms and galleries, and a number of shops, restaurants and green areas that will surround it from all sides, offering ‘panoramic views’ of the waterfront.

Sheikh Sultan Bin Ahmed Al Qasimi, chairman of Sharjah Media Centre, adds that choosing the design for the amphitheatre was a brief, if intensive, process.

“It was all done in a few days actually,” he says during the tour of the Al Majaz Island construction site. “We spoke to His Highness about the show and what we needed to do, with a big production in March 2014. We started looking for places and we chose a few places where we had done several shows before.”

“But then His Highness said that we needed a place that will be a very nice place for the show, a landmark, so to speak. So we looked around and then His Highness decided on this area,” Sheikh Sultan explains.

“We wanted to have an open amphitheatre and I think when most people see an open amphitheatre, they link it to Roman architecture, but it’s an open air amphitheatre and we think it’ll be one of the biggest and best in the region.”

“With regards to the show, we brought in an expert in the ‘creative areas’ so that if we have another show, we don’t need to do any more work on the theatre, it’s fully ready for anything.”

The contract for the Al Majaz Island project has been awarded to Gulf International Engineering Consultants and Emirates Stones, while the bridge linking the project to the mainland has been awarded to the Halcrow Group and Al Darwish Engineering, says Saeed Saada.

The bridge is set to be another challenge for the project, with Halcrow and its construction team working overtime to ensure that the project is completed on time. Achal Kumar, project manager (bridges) for Halcrow Group Middle East, says that the 29^th of January was the main deadline for the project.

“Everything, the bridge and the access road, needs to be ready by then,” he explains. “There will also be a small fountain, which will be ready by the end of February. Basically everything is going to be ready (by March), with the main components ready by the end of January,” Kumar asserts.

“I think the bridge will be done with no problems, we built the causeway early on so that the contractor could go on and build the building, while we’re building the bridge. Both parties are working together.”

“The causeway is much wider than the actual bridge, just to give access to the contractor,” he adds, citing it as an example of the cooperation between the parties.

Costing $3.53 million, the bridge has 44 pilings, with depths ranging from 19 metres for the carriageway to 22 metres for the piers.

“For the pouring, we have had to use some soil stabilisation,” says Kumar. “The subcontractor for piling, Soiltech, has used stabilising (for the bridge). It is for both vehicles and pedestrians. We have walkways and a seven metre carriageway, with limited, VIP access.”

Expanding on the theme of cooperation, Jawdat Barqawi, explains that there was a need to widen the access point so as to allow access for the precast segments and heavy equipment.

“In the beginning, there was only a small access area to the site. In order to start the work here, we asked for access to the site from Al Darwish Engineering and Halcrow. They made the temporary access that we have here. The site requires heavy equipment, at the beginning we had to excavate the area, we had to push all the heavy equipment to move in, and later we had to move with all the precast elements, with all our trailers, which was done using the temporary access.”

Mousa Mansour, civil engineer and area manager for Emirates Stone, points out that about 30% of the precast work is now complete, while the foundation works has all been finished. However, in contrast to the bridge, he explains that his firm has to approach laying the foundations in a different manner.

“The soil is soft, so we couldn’t do piling,” he says. “So we did what we call ‘strut foundation’. The bearing capacity for it was very good. We were concerned, at the start of the project, that we would spend more time on piling, so we did the soil investigation and we designed our foundation accordingly,” he adds.

Finally, Saleem Saada says that given the express nature of the project, it has been necessary for the Directorate of Public Works to step in and ensure that the entire process is as smooth as possible.

“We are limited because of time, but the precast is fine, they’re working according to schedule. The challenge now facing Emirates Stone is to finish this size of building within a very short time. It’s almost, you can say, three months from the day they gave the formal order,” he says.

“This of course includes all the MEP work, all the fire safety, and the authorities’ approvals. We’re helping them get that solution, we’re trying to remove all the obstacles for them.”

This feature first appeared in the March 2014 edition of Big Project ME. Find more pictures from the visit here.