Pile Testing in Boomtown Dubai – August 2011
Testconsult were recently involved with pile integrity testing on the prestigious new Dubailand project, situated in the desert, a few kilometres outside of Dubai City in the United Arab Emirates. Dubailand is set to become the world’s largest theme park, hotel complex and retail mall. The vision of the project will attract the tourist dollar to Dubai and diversify the long term economy of the region.
The main contractor on this project required independent verification of pile lengths provided by pilling contractors and instructed Testconsult to conduct a blind depth determination of the 400 piles, forming the foundations for two tower blocks on the 3 billion square foot project. Testing was carried out by Testconsult Foundation testing Engineer, Alex Whittaker, using the TDR2 pile integrity testing system (designed and developed by Tesconsult Equipment Division), which is probably the most sophisticated pile testing system available in the world today and currently in use in over 40 countries.
The visit contradicted recent reports that Dubai was scaling back investment after the world’s financial crisis. Alex says that ‘The city skyline was adorned with skyscrapers and cranes working on new projects, with most impressive of all the recently completed Burj Khalifa - the world’s tallest building. There certainly seemed to be no indication of the boomtown going bust.’
For further details on this type of testing, contact Alex Whittaker on alex@testconsult.co.uk