Zamil Steel, a global leader in the manufacture of pre-engineered steel buildings (PEB) has been awarded a QR 35.8 million (US$ 9.6 million) contract to supply and erect the steel building for Qatar's latest landmark Retail, Sports and Entertainment Center, 'Le Villaggio'.
Work on the 100,000 square meter development, which began in January 2004, is forecasted to be completed by May'05 and a soft opening is expected by October'2005. Amana Steel Building Contracting Company, Zamil Steel's exclusive Certified Builder in Qatar, has been awarded the erection of this prestigious project.
Located in Doha's Al Azizya district and sited within a new sports complex surrounding Khalifa Stadium, the Le Villaggio development will feature a total built up area of 145,000 square meters. Once completed, it will be Qatar's largest shopping center and will offer a comprehensive, yet focused mix of major retail outlets, services and entertainment activities. These will include bowling, a fun park, a roller coaster, ice rink, a six-theater cinema, fast food outlets and restaurant areas, a hotel and a hypermarket. These will all be set within and around an evocative coliseum and each of the elements will be linked together by water features, such as an indoor canal and a lake.
The exterior design will reflect an Italian hill town in form, scale, materials and color, while the interior plan is an organic curvilinear form which uses a street metaphor to unite and connect variously themed elements and districts, which will be joined together by a circuit of specially decorated street themes.
"In practical terms, what this means is a very complicated curved architecture, which necessitates the use of a mix of building materials incorporating concrete and steel. Zamil Steel's involvement in this project relates to the construction of the entertainment and department store areas as well as the hypermarket site and a three-dome decorative structure. These will be constructed using a pre-engineered building system, since this material will produce a finished product with large unobstructed areas as per our requirements," said Maher Mootassem, Project Manager, Business Trading Company, the developer of Le Villaggio.
Instead of using concrete, pre-cast or structural steel materials as the main structural system that is normally associated with the construction challenges posed by such projects, Zamil Steel offered a solution that combined a pre-engineered steel building (PEB) system with open web joists and decking panels. This revolutionizes the traditional PEB offering and provides increased versatility, flexibility and a more value-engineered system. Part of the outcome of this solution will be a massive clear building span of 92 meters – a record throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe using a PEB system.
Overall, more than 15,000 square meters of mezzanine steel beams, open web joists, Hambro composite joists and steel floor deckings will be used in the project. Also included are some 1,600 linear meters of suspended steel supports, which will act as frames for the chilled water pipes as well as the facated segment sheeting which will create a wall transition for the high structure lobby area between the various shop areas.
"This ambitious undertaking has posed significant supply challenges and these have been overcome by the use of a pre-engineered building. An example is the need to create 32 areas interlinked with each other even though they have differing spans, module and height configurations.," added Ihab Al Ramlawi, Amana Steel’s Business Development Manager.
The three-domed structure will cover an approximate floor area of 100,000 square meters and will feature some 8,000 metric tons of steel plus 115,000 square meters of Zamil Steel's insulated sandwich panels (Tempcon ®). The spans of the domes will range from 27 to 38 meters in diameter and their shapes and heights will vary from 22 to 32 meters from the finished floor level of the building.
The ice rink area which will feature a 92 meter clear span with an eave height of approximately 15 meters and the roller coaster area will have a 67 meter clear span area and an approximate eave height of 23 meters.
The erection team dedicated to this project includes 16 groups of erectors, lead men, a site engineer, foremen, a surveyor, and an erection coordinator. They report to an erection manager and coordinate site activities with the project manager from the developer, in order to handle work sequences and ensure timely material delivery to the correct sites. The erection procedure also includes locating and leasing long term heavy equipment such as cranes, telehandlers, forklifts and scissor lifts as well as defining the erection method relating to specialized structures.
"We awarded this project to Zamil Steel since it is the largest and most trusted name in the field of pre-engineered steel buildings in Qatar and with Amana as its certified and exclusive builder in the country, the value offering includes an unsurpassed level of technical knowledge and focused experience in constructing architecturally oriented pre-engineered steel buildings," concluded Mr. Mootassem, who added that the selection of Zamil Steel also took into consideration their very successful work that they undertook with Amana for the Landmark Shopping Mall, one of Business Trading Company's earlier projects in Qatar.
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