The delayed Cleveland Clinic project on Abu Dhabi’s Sowwah Island has experienced difficulties with logistics, according to a sub-contractor working on the hospital.
In an interview with MEP Middle East, director of MEP contractor ETA M&E Manoj Kumar Dhoot, said that the location of the project meant delivery of materials took longer than expected.
“Logistics was a big challenge since [the hospital] is built on an island. Whoever took that job was going to lose time with logistics,” he said.
“All the contractors on that site had a similar problem. Access was limited and we were not able to have storage there. We were given a separate storage area in Yas Island so we always had a lot of trucks coming in. There were sometimes long waits for cranes to become available,” he added.
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Changes to the hospital’s original design during construction further added to the project’s duration, according to Dhoot.
“There were also a lot of changes to the design and requirements. Naturally, with all this complexity, the time that was provided was insufficient,” he said.
The initial $1.3bn (AED4.7bn) main contract to build Cleveland Clinic was awarded to a joint venture between main contractors Six Construct (which has a 60% share of the contract) and Samsung C&T (40%) in 2010, with the value of the deal since revised to $1.54bn (AED 5.65bn).
Completion of the project was originally expected in 2013 but in a statement in January Samsung C&T announced its third contract extension within the past 12 months, with delivery now scheduled for the middle of April 2014.
“We have been given the revised date of 9 April and we are going to hand over,” said Dhoot.
Around 95% of the project is now complete, with most of the plant rooms commissioned and approvals from Abu Dhabi Municipality and the telephone department granted, according to the ETA M&E director.
Abu Dhabi Distribution Company has also energised the building, while the Civil Defence has completed the third of its inspections.
ETA M&E deployed a peak labour force of 10,000 along with 800 engineering staff on the project.
Date: Mar 10, 2014