ICON Q4 2011

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International Construction Review

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04 QUARTER 2011

PROPPING UP A PYRAMID How 21st Century technology is preventing one of the oldest pyramids in Egypt from collapsing

ALSO INSIDE: RETURNING TO LIBYA EAST AFRICA’S BOLD NEW RAIL PLANS THE CONTROVERSIAL SAN FRANCISCO BAY BRIDGE

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CONTENTS | 3

IN THIS ISSUE 6 GLOBAL ROUND-UP

Foster-designed Virgin Galactic Spaceport opens in New Mexico; Hochtief eyes Canadian and Indian acquisitions; 'Usual suspects' vying for Qatar World Cup management contract; CH2M Hill set to acquire UK's Halcrow.

Plus more 10 RETURNING TO LIBYA

Gaddafi is dead but billions of dollars worth of construction work remains.

Kristina Smith talks to the “pathfinders” to assess the opportunities and risks in this highly fluid situation

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14 PLANIT VALLEY DELAYED

The first wave of the new eco-city in Portugal, PlanIT Valley, was supposed to be nearing completion by now, but work hasn't started yet. The man behind it explains why it was delayed, and why it doesn't matter very much 18 BRIDGE OF CONTROVERSY

The iconic new east span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge has been highly controversial, with its steel sections outsourced to China and its design pushing the boundaries in a seismic zone 22 PROPPING UP PYRAMIDS

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How an engineer from Wales convinced the Supreme Council on Antiquities to accept his proposal to use airbags and grouted steel bars to give a pyramid some backbone 28 PROJECT NEWS: MIDDLE EAST

Foster + Partners unveils designs for Kuwait International Airport and TPS leads on new air control tower in Oman 30 EAST AFRICA’S BOLD RAIL PLANS

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More than 6,000 kilometres of new lines are planned, knitting together a region nearly the size of Western Europe and liberating the stranded resources of the land-locked interior 34 VIEW FROM HERE

FOSTER + PARTNERS

Newly-elected President of the CIOB Middle East region Stephen Lines highlights the challenges and opportunities facing the region in the next two years and offers advice to anyone thinking of moving there

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CONTENTS | 5

LEFT-FIELD INGENUITY INTERNATIONAL BRANCHES CIOB Africa LARRY FEINBERG PO BOX 896, Rivonia, 2128, South Africa Tel: +27 11 234 7877 Fax: +27 11 234 8354 lfeinberg@ciob.co.za www.ciob.co.za CIOB Australasia ELIZABETH THOMAS GPO Box 5146, Sydney NSW 2001, Australia tel: +61 (2) 9816 4700 fax: +61 (2) 9816 4699 ethomas@ciob.org.au www.ciob.org.au CIOB China, Country Office - Beijing WINNIE ZHANG Room 11B, CITIC Building, No 19 Jian Guo Men Wai Str. Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100004, PRC Tel: +86 10 6528 1070 Fax: +86 10 6528 1075 wzhang@ciob.org.cn www.ciob.org.cn www.ciobinternational.org CIOB East China office, Shanghai Ms GRACE TAO Suite 1412, The Tower No.993, Nanjing Road West, Shanghai, China 200041 Tel: +86 (0) 21 6272 9358 gtao@ciob.org.cn West China Office, Chongqing Ms ANNIE WANG G-11F-8, Xinyang Plaza, No 8 Shapingba Avenue, Shapingba District, Chongqing, 400030, PRC Tel: +86 23 6547 2560 23 6547 2560 awang@ciob.org.cn www.ciob.org.cn www.ciobinternational.org CIOB Hong Kong Ms IVY LO Room 1602, 16th Floor, Tung Chiu Commercial Centre 193 Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong Tel: +852 2543 6369 Fax: +852 311 1105 ilo@ciob.org.hk www.ciob.org.hk CIOB in Ireland KAREN HALLIGAN The CIOB in Ireland, PO Box 54, Rathfeigh Post office, Navan, Co. Meath khalligan@ciob.org.uk CIOB Malaysia Ms AUDREY CHEN 5th Floor, No. 8 Jalan Bangsar Utama 9, Bangsar Utama, 59000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: (603) 2284 5754 Fax: (603) 2284 9754 achen@ciob.org.my CIOB Singapore Ms ANITA KATHIRAYSON The CIOB, Singapore Centre, 116 Middle Rd #09-01(D), ICB Enterprise House, Singapore 188972 Tel: +65 63344116 Fax: +65 63344211 akathirayson@ciob.org.sg CIOB Middle East Ms AMY GOUGH Tel: +44 (0) 1344 630 791 agough@ciob.org.uk CIOB Head Office Englemere, Kings Ride, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 7TB, UK Tel: +44 1344 630 706 Fax: +44 1344 630 777 memenquiry@ciob.org.uk

Editor ROD SWEET iconedit@gmail.com Art Editor DORIANE LAITHIER dorianel@gmail.com News & Letters iconedit@gmail.com

There is something heartwarming about how Cintec, the company founded by engineering entrepreneur Peter James FCIOB, was chosen

by Egypt’s Supreme Council on Antiquities after years of deliberation to help prevent the further disintegration of the earthquake-damaged Pyramid of Djoser, one of the oldest pyramids in the land of the Pharaohs (page 22). The learned members of the Council, burdened with stewardship of the 4,700-year-old monument designed by the great sage Imhotep, may well have been taken aback by the solution proposed by the wise-cracking Welshman – airbags. However, his arguments eventually won the day and Cintec’s fascinating fix is currently being implemented, a little example of left-field ingenuity finding its place in the big, wide world.

Those waiting to witness the ground-breaking ingenuity of smart city PlanIT Valley in Portugal will have to wait a while longer, however, as ground-breaking at the site, first announced for the beginning of this year, still hadn’t happened as of going to press (page 14). Steve Lewis, CEO of Living PlanIT, the man behind the vision of whole cities impregnated with computing power and assembled like cars and aeroplanes, blames the delay on the eurozone debt crisis which triggered political upheaval in Portugal. With a new coalition government now getting down to business, he insists work will start this quarter. The delay is understandable. And in the meantime Living PlanIT continues to build its head of steam, in September formalising a cooperation agreement with Deutsche Telekom, adding another big name to its impressive “ecosystem” of global technology players. But interviewed for this issue Lewis wouldn’t disclose particulars about how Living PlanIT will revolutionise the industry with a virtual design model linked to a global supply chain of parts manufacturers, which he says will make construction as streamlined as car-making. We wait to see whether this head of steam will produce a substantially new way of designing, assembling and operating buildings or, on the other hand, so much froth, perhaps in support of a public stock offering.

Meanwhile, good news from East Africa, where a hugely ambitious railway masterplan envisages more than 6,000 kilometres of new and rehabilitated lines, knitting together a region nearly the size of Western Europe and liberating stranded resources in the vast, land-locked interior (page 30). For decades the region’s old, narrow-gauge network has been creaking toward obsolescence, but there are encouraging signs that private investment, robust economic growth, intra-regional cooperation and a rolling back of state bureaucracy will usher in a new age of rail, priming the pump for desperately needed economic and social development.

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04 QUARTER 2011

ROD SWEET EDITOR

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6 | GLOBAL ROUND-UP

TRENDS

SIX CONSTRUCT AWARDED EUR416 MILLION CONTRACT FOR YAS MALL, ABU DHABI

FOSTER-DESIGNED VIRGIN GALACTIC SPACEPORT OPENS IN NEW MEXICO Billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson opened his US$209-million space terminal, designed by Foster + Partners, in the New Mexico desert on October 17. It will provide flights to space tourists some time after 2012.

Tickets start at $200,000.

The Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space, a combined terminal and hangar facility, can house two WhiteKnightTwo and five SpaceShipTwo vehicles. The Gateway will house all of the company’s astronaut preparation and hospitality facilities, and a “mission control” centre.

The 120,000 square-foot building, which meets LEED Gold standards for environmental quality, was designed by

Foster + Partners along with URS Corporation and local New Mexico architects SMPC. The trio won an international competition in 2007 to build the first private spaceport in the world.

Built using local materials and regional construction techniques, the facility uses geothermal heating and cooling.

The vehicles will carry small groups of customers on sub-orbital space flights, allowing a zero-gravity experience and offering views of Planet Earth.

Branson has been gearing up for space tourism for years, having registered Virgin Galactic as a company in the United Kingdom in 1999. icon

MARK GREENBERG

Richard Branson’s WhiteKnight2, mothership for sub-orbital craft SpaceShip2, on a test flight over Virgin Galactic’s new spaceport

The BESIX Group announced on 16 October that its subsidiary Six Construct had been awarded the main construction contract for Yas Mall, Abu Dhabi, valued at EUR 416 million.

Developed by Aldar Properties, Yas Mall is a major retail development on Yas Island, the new leisure and entertainment development.

Six Construct will build the 235,000 square meter retail area, northeast and northwest decked car parks with capacity to house a total of 10,000 cars, and all associated infrastructure. The total built-up area will be approximately 1.2 million square meters. The project is scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2013.

The BESIX Group, 50% owned by Egypt’s Orascom Construction Industries, completed construction of the marina at the Yas Island Formula One race circuit in 2008. icon

COMPANIES

‘No fear’ as Hochtief eyes Canadian and Indian acquisitions The biggest German construction group, Hochtief, plans to make acquisitions in Canada and India totalling hundreds of millions of euros, boss Frank Stieler said in an interview published Saturday.

In an interview Stieler told the weekly Wirtschaftswoche that the company had “absolutely no fear” of the global economic crisis, saying, “We are well equipped globally and we have been able to protect Hochtief thanks to activities less

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Frank Stieler

vulnerable to the situation.”

“Very soon we’re going to acquire a construction company on the west coast of Canada which has a turnover of well over 100 million euros,” he said. “We are also looking at buying a building engineering group in India – another purchase in the hundreds of millions of euros.”

In August Hochtief reported a quarterly net profit of 13.8 million euros ($20 million), which was better than forecast despite weather-related

problems in Australia. The company maintained its 2011 targets, including a pre-tax profit half the 2010 figure of 756.6 million euros, but a net profit that exceeds the previous year figure of 546 million euros.

Hochtief itself was victim of a hostile takeover earlier this year by Spanish giant Actividades de Construccion y Servicios (ACS), but Stieler, who was appointed in May, said their activities were totally independent. icon 04 QUARTER 2011

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500-seat prototype stadium designed by Arup to showcase carbon neutral techniques in Qatari desert

QATAR WORLD CUP

‘Usual suspects’ vying for Qatar World Cup management contract Qatar will award a contract in November to programme manage projects for the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament, according to Reuters.

Quoting an industry source in Doha, the news agency reported that more than six companies are vying for the contract, expected to be awarded in November, including UK consultants Arup and Mace and US constructor Turner International.

“It is a lump sum contract for 13 years, and will be awarded to one team comprised of about 50 people,” the source is quoted as saying, adding: “A lot of firms have teamed up with each other, to make sure they have the best quality resources. It is a big deal, so the usual suspects are pitching for it.”

Reuters reported that Mace had confirmed in an interview that it was in the running for the Qatar

soccer project and expected a decision before December.

Qatar won the bid to host the 2022 soccer tournament last December and is preparing to build housing, infrastructure, transport and sport facilities for the event.

It is thought that the programme management contract could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with the winning group to oversee the construction of the stadia as well as awarding contracts to builders.

“The (programme manager) will coordinate with all government agencies on the large projects. We want to make sure that close coordination is done early on and that systems are in place, so we do not have to go back and make changes later,”

2022 Supreme Committee Spokesman Nasser AlKhater said last month.

The programme manager will also bring on board consultants, contractors and suppliers, he said.

Qatar will spend $4bn to host the event, including the cost of constructing stadia, the committee has said. Stadia are estimated to cost between $200m and $400m each to build. The country will build nine new stadia and renovate three existing facilities.

2022 Supreme Committee secretary general Hassan Al Thawadi said in June that the country planned to complete construction of the first stadium for the 2022 soccer World Cup by 2015. icon

CONTRACTS: INDIA

UAE’S ARABTEC LANDS THREE INDIAN DEVELOPMENTS IN JOINT VENTURE WITH RAHEJA A joint venture of UAE’s Arabtec Construction and Raheja Developers in India has been awarded a contract to build three mixed-use projects in Delhi and Gurgaon worth $204m.

Arabtec Construction-Raheja, a venture 63% owned by the Dubai-

based contractor, is to build the Raheja Revanta in Gurgaon in Haryana, what will be a high-rise apartment tower and low rise buildings, a total of 1,000 units, as well as the Raheja Shristi project, a 300-apartment residential complex.

It will also build Raheja Phoenix, at Shadpur in the Indian capital, includes a 50-floor tower, a shopping mall and 2,800 housing units.

The buildings will cover a total area of 380ha and will be built over a fouryear schedule.

Arabtec Construction, the building arm of Arabtec Holding, the UAE’s biggest building conglomerate, is trying to diversify its project portfolio away from its home country in the wake of a severe decline in projects in the last three years. icon

“IF YOU WANT YOUR PYRAMIDS DONE, COME TO WALES” RR PETER JAMES ON FIXING THE PYRAMID OF DJOSER, PAGE 22 icon

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8 | GLOBAL ROUND-UP

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

MORE FAMOUS UK NAMES ARE SWALLOWED UP

CH2M Hill, part of the delivery team for the London Olympics, will buy up Halcrow. And Dutch firm Arcadis is moving on EC Harris

ODA

US engineering giant CH2M Hill is set to acquire UKbased engineer Halcrow as long-established UK firms continue to be snapped up by bigger overseas entities, a trend kicked off by Aecom’s acquisition of British QS Davis Langdon in 2010.

The two companies announced September 26 an agreement which will see CH2M Hill buy 100 percent of the share capital of Halcrow Holdings Limited for the sum of approximately £124 million. The acquisition is subject to Halcrow’s shareholder approval and the approval of the UK high court, and is expected to close in November 2011.

Halcrow boss Peter Gammie said the sale is “the culmination of a business relationship going back many years. We have worked together on many occasions and have become very much aware of each other’s strengths and working practices.” He added: “The consolidation... will create a very significant value proposition for clients.”

Meanwhile, Dutch engineer Arcadis announced 17 October it would buy UK consultant EC Harris. Arcadis will finance the merger by issuing three million shares to current EC Harris partners, in addition to an undisclosed amount of cash. EC Harris employs some 2,600 people worldwide. The new entity will employ close to 19,000 and see global revenues of € 2.3 billion, Arcadis said.

In a notable exception to the trend, UK QS Gleeds announced in October its acquisition of the $2-million turnover, New-York-based consultant ProjectConsult, giving it a stronger foothold in the US market and complementing its Atlanta, Georgia office. Already active around the world, Gleeds said the UK would represent a shrinking share of its total activities icon

CORRUPTION

THOUSANDS OF PUBLIC OFFICIALS PROSECUTED AS BRIBERY PERVADES CHINESE CONSTRUCTION Despite persistent campaigns and tough penalties corruption in infrastructure projects is still pervasive, China’s anti-graft agencies have warned.

Official news agency Xinhua reports that, according to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China, the country’s key anti-graft agency, over the first eight months of this year, about 6,800 officials have been prosecuted for corruption in infrastructure projects across the country.

And prosecutors uncovered graft cases in this sector involving more than 2.99 billion yuan ($468 million) during a nationwide campaign from

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September 2009 to March this year, according to the Ministry of Supervision.

Local prosecutors closely involved in corruption investigations have found that bribery is now included as a regular part of many contractors’ budgets as “public relations expenses”.

A bribe may exceed 1 million yuan if the project is estimated to cost 20 million yuan, said a city prosecutor in Jiangxi province, who asked to remain anonymous. “In most cases, bribes make up 5 to 10 percent of the total cost of a project,” he said.

The bribery occurs in many stages of a project, including land-use approval, project management,

public bidding, the purchase of construction materials and equipment as well as project inspections, said Zhang Xin, a provincial prosecutor in Jilin province.

Besides accepting outright cash, officials receive shopping vouchers, dividends, overseas tour packages, school tuition for their children, houses and luxury goods, Zhang said.

Prosecutors have also found that chief officials in government departments or State-owned enterprises related to infrastructure development are susceptible to corruption.

In October Wu Rijing, a former chairman and general manager of the State-owned Guangdong

Xinguang International Group, stood trial at a local court in Guangdong province charged with accepting more than 26 million yuan in bribes, offering bribes of more than 1 million yuan, and embezzling more than 46 million yuan of public money.

Prosecutors say all the crimes occurred when Wu was in charge of subcontracting construction projects between 2006 and 2008.

Anti-graft agencies need to cooperate with the government financial supervision and auditing agencies and set up an informationsharing platform and blacklist contractors involved in graft cases in order to stop them from bidding for other projects, Zhang said. icon 04 QUARTER 2011

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TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURE

HILL INTERNATIONAL WINS WORK IN BRAZIL AND AFGHANISTAN US risk and management consultant Hill International has won a contract from the Afghanistan Ministry of Public Works to project manage a major roads project there. The fouryear contract has an estimated value to Hill of approximately US$37 million.

The Qaisar-Laman Ring Road project, funded by the Asian Development Bank, involves the upgrading of a 233-kilometre section of road between Andkhoy and Herat.

The project will facilitate north-south commerce along Afghanistan’s western border with Iran, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

“We are honored to have been selected to manage the construction of this important infrastructure project for the citizens of Afghanistan,” said Abdo E. Kardous, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the Asia-Pacific region for Hill’s Project Management Group.

Meanwhile Hill’s subsidiary Engineering S.A. in August won a contract from Brazilian real estate developer Multiplan to provide project management services in the construction of two commercial towers in the city of Sao Paulo. The 31-month contract has an estimated value to Engineering S.A. of US$2.5 million.

Multiplan, a leading developer of Brazilian shopping centres with 13 operating units, will invest an estimated $275 million in two luxury commercial towers in the Morumbi area. The first tower will be 18 stories tall with a built-up area of 36,500 square metres. The second tower will be 26 stories tall with a built-up area of 36,900 square metres.

The towers are designed by Aflalo e Gasperini Arquitectura and will incorporate sustainability design elements in preparation for LEED certification.

“This new project demonstrates the extraordinary strength of Engineering S.A. in construction management of commercial buildings, with currently over ten such projects under construction,” said Marcos Berretini, Director of Engineering S.A. Engineering News-Record magazine recently ranked Hill as the 8th largest construction management firm in the United States. icon

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New Moroccan high-speed rail link to halve journey time from Casablanca to Tangier Construction has started on a new, high-speed rail link between Tangier and Casablanca in the North African country of Morocco.

A 200-km line is to be built first from Tangier to Kénitra, from where trains would use the upgraded existing line via Rabat to Casablanca. Services are expected to begin by the end of 2015, when journey times between the two cities should be more than halved, from 5h 45min now to 2h 10min.

A future second phase is planned to extend the line to its full 350km by linking Kénitra to Casablanca.

A ceremony was held on September 29 to mark the start of construction, attended by King Mohammed VI and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, reflecting the cooperation between the two countries on the project to date.

Moroccan state railway ONCF has ordered a fleet of 14 double-decked Alstom Duplex trains equipped to operate at up to 320 km/h on the high speed line and at up to 220 km/h on the existing network.

Total costs of the scheme are currently set at about 20 billion dirhams (approximately 1.78 billion Euros). The majority of these costs are for infrastructure (10 billion dirhams), while other costs relate to railway equipment (5.6 billion dirhams) and rolling stock (4.4 billion dirhams).

French President Nicholas Sarkozy and King Mohammed IV at construction launch

The Moroccan government is providing 4.8bn dirhams in funding alongside 1.9bn dirhams from French and European sources, while 12.3bn dirhams has been raised in loans, including a 740m-dirham contribution from the Kuwait Fund for Arab & Economic Development.

The HSR scheme forms part of the Moroccan government’s plans for economic development set out in its National Development Programme initiated in 2002. icon

High-speed to Casablanca

“ONE OF THE CHALLENGES WHEN YOU WANT TO BRING MAJOR DEBT INTO A MARKET IS THAT DEBT LOVES POLITICAL STABILITY” RR STEVE LEWIS ON DELAYS TO PLANIT VALLEY, PAGE 14

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10 | NEWS FEATURE LIBYA

TIME TO RETURN? Gaddafi is now dead but the billions of dollars worth of construction work stalled or in the pipeline remains. Kristina Smith talks to the “pathfinders” to assess the developing opportunities and risks in what is a highly fluid situation

F

rom an upstairs room in a converted Victorian townhouse in Ashford, Kent, UK, ex-army bomb disposal expert Mick Allen is monitoring the movements of his team in Libya, 24 hours a day. Allen is operations director for the Inkerman Group, a firm which provides intelligence, protection and all manner of connected services for firms who want to operate in potentially risky countries.

Allen’s team of men – he won’t say how many there are, only that there are ‘less than ten’ – is in Tripoli to assess the lie of the land for clients looking to send their people back.

They are visiting their clients’ offices and assets, assessing telecommunications, roads, ports, airports, hospitals and schools, hotels and border crossings. And working out who’s running what: “We are developing touch points within the city, within the different militias,” says Allen. “The airport will be looked after by one particular militia group, the port by another. We are getting to know the commanders of these militias, paying our respects to them and advising them of what we are trying to achieve.”

There are many ‘pathfinder’ companies and individuals like Inkerman in Libya, working for big multinationals who are keen to re-establish their presence now that a new regime is in place. It is too unsettled for most firms to send employees into Libya, but what anyone with experience there knows is that face-to-face contact is the only way in.

There are a few who are prepared to take the risk. “It is important that we show a bit of solidarity,” said the director of a small construction firm who was preparing to make a short return visit to Libya in mid-October. “We are going extremely discreetly, meeting the people we want to meet and coming out again, either by plane or across the border.”

Firms forced to abandon their sites when fighting broke out in February this year have already approached the Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC) hoping to agree outstanding payment and compensation before they return to work. And while the big tranches of public works will not be let for months or years, repair work is up for grabs now.

The NTC’s UK representative Guma al-Gamaty told businessmen at a conference in London called ‘Libya – the Future’, on 26 September that reconstruction of offices and shops in heavily damaged towns would begin immediately.

Graham Hand, chief executive of British Expertise, which helps UK professional service businesses win work overseas, had heard from someone who has been working with the

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NTC in Libya for the past four months that the project to oversee the reconstruction of Misrata has already been let to a French firm. “I take it that this was let under an emergency dispensation,” he says.

Longer-term, there are plenty of reasons why overseas contractors and consultants should consider Libya. Before the war there was a huge array of public infrastructure and private development underway: hospitals, universities, airports, power stations, residential, mixed use and even football stadia. In the new Libya, there will be more.

“Investment is needed across the board, everywhere – it’s going to be huge,” says John Ellis of UK Construction Link, who helps small British construction firms get going in Libya. “$500m has been made available for immediate infrastructure repair and the NTC has estimated that $200bn will be spent on infrastructure over the next 10 years.”

The most immediate work will involve repairing the heavily damaged cities such as Sirte and Bani Walid, reinstating power and water supplies, getting ports and airports up and running, security-related facilities such as police stations, hospitals and healthcare. Education will be important, with

“NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND LIBYANS WORKED FOR THE GOVERNMENT AND HAD NO INCENTIVE TO DEVELOP NEW SKILLS BECAUSE THEY HAD A JOB FOR LIFE” 04 QUARTER 2011

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These photographs, taken by Inkerman staff in October, show street life returning to normal in Libya. The NTC has said that it wants to diversify the economy to reduce Libya’s dependence on oil and gas, developing alternative small businesses and tourism

Gerald Moor, chief executive officer of the Inkerman Group who was born in Benghazi. “The Libyan people want to encourage those that already had contracts to come back,” he says. “Anyone who had a contract had one because they had built up relationships over time, getting to know people, getting to know their families. That way of life and doing business is not going to change.”

the 25-plus universities programme likely to continue and schools following on from that.

The NTC has also said that it wants to diversify to reduce the country’s dependence on oil and gas, developing alternative energy businesses, small businesses and tourism.

There are plans to introduce a Dubai-style model for alcohol, where non-Muslims are allowed to drink in certain areas.

There will be opportunities for firms with a proven track record in the right sectors, says Ellis, adding that British firms could gain a competitive advantage by offering training.

“Maybe some Libyans can come and work in the UK, or dedicated training courses can be provided. Libyans are going to be ambitious to increase their knowledge.” English is the second language in Libya.

“Nine hundred thousand Libyans worked for the government and had no incentive to develop new skills because they had a job for life,” al-Gamaty told the London conference. “They need a new incentive to work, and this is where private enterprise comes in.”

Firms and individuals with a track record in Libya are likely to do best because that is how Arab culture works, says

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Gerald Moor, chief executive officer of the Inkerman Group, says Libyan people encourage those with contracts to come back

THE BUSINESS VACUUM As fighting continued in Sirte politicians from NATO countries visited Libya, keen to pave the way for business deals. British prime minister David Cameron and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy visited on 15 September, followed by Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the day after. The German premier has yet to visit, although a German business delegation headed by the Secretary of State for the Federal Ministry of Economy Hans Joachim Otto went to Benghazi on 27 July to talk to the NTC. There have been suggestions that countries who supported the uprising will be favoured but al-Gamaty denied this: “Contracts will be awarded not on the basis of political favouritism, but on merit, quality and competitiveness,” he said.

Aside from Libya’s oil reserves, which are the largest in Africa and the ninth largest in the world, and the bonanza of construction contracts, new deals are being set up for the supply of every imaginable product and service. Under the previous regime all such deals came under the control of the Gaddafi family. Now there is a vacuum and a rush to fill it.

So along with the pathfinder firms and journalists, there are plenty of foreign businessmen in Tripoli. “Tactically, the picture is that Tripoli is open and people want to do business,” says Mick Allen, but he adds: “There are some difficulties around that. In terms of the security situation, things are in flux.”

Even as late as 14 October there were gun battles in Tripoli.

The Libyan people are very welcoming and jubilant, says Allen, but visitors should be prepared to see a gun at every turn. In the five-star Corinthia hotel in the city centre there is a rack by the door for AK-47s. “Everyone has a weapon,” says Mick Allen. “They are going to have to get rid of those. Expect to see Toyota Landcruisers driving around with big weapons systems on the back.” The Inkerman team usually stays indoors after dark because youths gather in the streets to let off a few rounds, just because they can.

There are practical challenges, too, says Allen: “The banks don’t have money, cash points don’t often have money and when they do they run out very quickly.” All transactions are done in cash, either dinars or dollars. The black market is busy. Allen reports that Libyan cellphone SIM cards have risen in price from $10 to $12 to over $100.

Nor is getting to Tripoli straightforward. The city’s main airport is closed. Turkish Airlines flies in to the joint publicmilitary Matiga airport 8km east of the city centre, but only when they get clearance from NATO. Turkish Airlines also flies from Istanbul to Benghazi but since the besieged town of Sirte lies on the main East-West coastal highway, getting to Tripoli from there is not currently possible.

Tripoli’s port is open for goods and some sources have said that ferries are running from Misrata, Benghazi and Malta. But according to Allen’s team there were no passenger ferries RR www.iconreview.org

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RR arriving there as of mid-October. Mostly people are flying to Gerber airport in Tunisia and travelling overland from there.

Roads are increasingly busy as petrol becomes more available, says Allen.

For those needing visas the picture is confusing. Visas for UK nationals weren’t being issued in Britain or Libya. However a system had developed from late September where a letter of invitation from a Libyan national was required. If the letter was delivered in Tripoli and faxed to the frontier, providing the traveller had a copy of that letter, they could cross the border, reports Allen.

Business meetings continue outside Libya. John Ellis of UK Construction Link, whose Libyan partner based in Tripoli has advised him not to come yet, has been meeting contacts in Tunisia, Egypt and London where many of them have been based during the conflict.

Meanwhile there are efforts to get back to normal. Local schools had opened up at the end of September, although the international ones remained closed.

“FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO GO BACK IF THEY HAVE NOT PAID THEIR PEOPLE IN THE INTERIM THEY MUST MAKE SURE THEY DO SO NOW”

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO? The general view, or hope, is that the NTC is keen to get foreign firms back and working on their incomplete projects.

“Libya has got to get on with it,” says Ellis. “I think it will bounce back very quickly. It’s too early to decide what will go ahead and what will be re-looked at. Certainly some of the big masterplanning schemes that are a while off may be reconsidered but works that have already started, these have got more of a chance of carrying on.”

Those firms with stalled projects will be keen to resume work and to get more but some are taking a hard-headed approach, with a view to losses already incurred. One contractor with several sites in Libya said his company wouldn’t go back until agreements about outstanding payments had been reached with whoever turns out to be the client, and his one remaining Libyan employee has advised him that the situation remains changeable.

“We need to agree payment for the work already executed, both for works with an approved payment certificate and those that have yet to be issued,” he said. “We need to agree claims relating to the past period and for the necessary

extension of time, including costs. And we have to agree compensation for the damage suffered and the evacuation and remobilisation costs.”

Contractors from Turkey, China and South Korea all had big presences in Libya before the conflict, as did designers and project managers from Europe and America. Turkish contractors, who have reportedly been among the first to send representatives back to Libya, have 214 unfinished projects worth $15bn in Libya, according to the Turkish Contractors Association (TMB). China Radio International (CRI) reported that 75 Chinese companies had an estimated $20bn of contracts in Libya and South Korean contractors had 53 projects on the go, worth $10.7 billion, according to the International Contractors Association of Korea.

The first task for any contractor returning will be to assess any damage or theft. There was reported looting of some offices and construction sites early on. Sites along the coast where fighting was concentrated are most likely to have been hit although there have been reports that remoter sites lost roofing and drainage.

One ex-pat who lived in Tripoli until the war and who now works for Inkerman Group suggests that looting has been targeted. “For 41 years the Libyans had to manage under a regime that 98% of them hated, but knowing amongst themselves who was actually corrupt and who was paying lip service because they had to,” says the wife of a senior oil company executive who asked not to be named. “Those who the community have seen to obviously benefit have been specifically targeted. So you will see nine out of 10 houses in a street will be fine but the 10th house will have been entered and things will have gone.”

She reports that many Libyan employees of multinational companies have shown huge loyalty during the troubles, looking after homes and offices. “I will go back to Libya because I want to thank the local Libyans who have been so magnificent,” she says. “They have been astonishingly brave.”

“For those people who want to go back if they have not paid their people in the interim they must make sure they do so now,” advises Inkerman CEO Gerald Moor. “It’s shortsighted if you don’t.” The executive’s wife adds that people

GETTING (BACK) INTO LIBYA 1. Never mind getting in – think just as seriously about getting out. “You cannot go to somewhere like Libya without having contingency plans,” says Mick Allen, operations director for intelligence and security firm Inkerman Group. These should back-up communications, insurance and medical plans.

2. Be patient and flexible. This rule applies equally to waiting to cross a border as to arranging business meetings. “Meetings get cancelled at the last minute. People don’t turn up. Some people cannot handle this sort of flexibility and can get quite frustrated when nothing happens on time,” says Ellis. Getting angry or agitated in situations where progress is slow will make progress even slower, warns Allen.

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3. Be culturally aware. “It’s about being respectful and open,” says Allen, “not promising to deliver something you cannot, because you lose face. It’s about taking time to take tea, just because you want to take tea with an individual.” Allen also advises dressing appropriately: ditch the flashy sunglasses or watches.

4. Be prepared to make many visits. Libyans want to know you and trust you before they do business. “You have to commit to making several visits in quick succession,” says Ellis.

“The shorter the duration between visits and the higher the number of visits determine how quickly business will come. I suggest once a month, over several months.”

5. Find yourself an agent. “It will be virtually impossible without having a local person on the ground,” says Ellis. “You need a local person or a local company with influence for a whole range of reasons.” These include complying with legislation, navigating bureaucracy, understanding which projects are real and which aren’t, and getting paid on time. Agents are likely to be small family-run firms or individuals.

6. If you do win work the only thing to be inflexible about is payment terms, says Ellis.

“The most successful companies in the past are those that have stuck quite rigidly to their payment terms. And if payments have been delayed or missed, they have basically stopped work. Firms have come unstuck when they have continued to work when payments have not been made.”

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Board (HIB) and the Libyan Investment and Development Corporation (LIDCO). While senior officials may be purged it seems likely that officials further down the line will be needed.

Says Ellis: “There is nothing to replace those government departments with so I think the majority of them will exist with changes at a very senior level.”

Ellis sounds this note of caution, however: “It may be that some companies have to choose quite carefully who they are engaging with because it may be that previous contacts may not be as beneficial to them as they were in the past,” he says. “If companies have been maintaining communication links throughout the hostilities they will have a good feel if they are dealing with the right people.

Almost certainly new people will come into play that will become more important.”

Whether those corrupting influences will be completely removed, however, remains to be seen. “There are bound to be some wealthy individuals that will inveigle their way back in, but at arm’s length and out of sight,” says one consultant who hopes to return to work in Libya. “All those people will have brokered their positions weeks ago.” should pay bonuses too to reward their staff’s loyalty.

Recruitment firms are already limbering up to provide willing bodies once old projects do restart. KCM Recruitment has already advertised for the posts of project manager and assistant technical manager on a $200-million high-rise mixed-use building in Tripoli.

“Clients have made contact with me about the possibility of starting next year, but it’s very early days yet,” says KCM director Gerry Keigher. “I am testing the water to find out what the general interest is and what conditions people would look to return there under.”

He says there has been a big response, although this happens with any job advert in the current market. “I am looking for people who have worked in a country with a troubled background, like Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia, and ideally someone who has experience within MENA. There are plenty of people I have spoken to who are willing to go over there. In the end it boils down to money.”

ABOVE: Damage to buildings has been extensive in the east of the country where fighting was heaviest

WHO’S THE CLIENT NOW? The NTC’s priority now is political stability. Even with Gaddafi gone the various tribal militia groups will need to be unified under one authority. Observers hope tribal divisions do not open up and plunge Libya into more conflict. Elections will be held in perhaps 20 months.

For construction firms the very basic question – who’s the client? – remains unanswerable. “It’s still too early to say who is going to be important,” says John Ellis. “There are all sorts of people who will take part in future governments that we do not know.”

“I AM LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE WORKED IN A COUNTRY WITH A TROUBLED BACKGROUND, LIKE IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN OR SOMALIA” The NTC has said it will honour existing contracts but there is one rather sizeable caveat: there must not have been any corruption in letting them. What this means is far from clear because corruption was widely acknowledged to be rife at the highest levels. Under the old regime projects were let through departments such as the Organisation of Development for Administrative Centres (ODAC) the Housing Infrastructure

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THE MOST VALUABLE COMMODITY It’s hard to know for sure who has been back. British consultancy firms were told in September that the French, Germans and Italians had already beaten them to it. One UK project manager had heard that Turkish construction people had been in Libya from mid- to late-September, renewing old contacts. But Allen’s team reported that Italian contractors connected to the airport works were the only ones they had encountered in Tripoli.

Charles Gurdon, MD of Libya Focus, which provides weekly and monthly updates on Libya, heard from bankers that Germany, France and Italy have already made multi-billion dollar funds available to the NTC so that it could purchase goods and services from their respective countries.

Meanwhile the UK’s export credit agency ECGD (Export Credit Guarantee Department) announced that it would provide a rather paltry £250m in total to cover British firms wishing to export to Libya.

There were cries of ‘nanny state’ in the UK as the Foreign Office advised that businessmen should not to travel to Libya at all, a view which was relaxed in early October to allow essential travel only. “There is a feeling that the British have been slow,” says Gurdon. “Although the NTC was very willing to buy British good and services, they were saying ‘why have the funds not been allocated?’.”

Graham Hand of British Expertise wants the UK government to fund an infrastructure-focussed mission to Libya in November. “You can do as many things as you like in the UK, but you have to get on the ground talking to people, finding out what the procurement process will be,” he says.

For now, opportunity in Libya knocks mostly for “pathfinder” and security firms. The entrepreneurial Andrew Payne, who spoke to iCON about his flight from Libya in March (see iCON Quarter 2, 2011), has teamed up with all-risks firm Trango, quoted in the same article.

On 10 October, Trango MD Simon France said on LinkedIn that the new venture, Trango Special Projects, was open for business in Libya, offering secure accommodation, an insider’s view of the construction market, as well as protection and travel.

Overall the most valuable commodity right now is information: what’s happening, where, how to get things done and who is in charge. “Things are always changing,” says Mick Allen. “Information is current for three days, four or five top.” icon www.iconreview.org

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14 | NEWS FEATURE SMART CITIES

DEBT CRISIS IN PORTUGAL DELAYS PLANIT VALLEY The first wave of the revolutionary new, smart, eco-city in Portugal, called PlanIT Valley, was supposed to be nearing completion by now, but work hasn’t started yet. Here Living PlanIT CEO Steve Lewis tells Rod Sweet why it was delayed, and why it doesn’t matter very much

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t certainly has been a busy few weeks for Steve Lewis.

Even in the context of the last three, manic years, this has been a busy few weeks. On September 1 his company Living PlanIT was named by the World Economic Forum as one of 25 Technology Pioneers for 2012. On September 14 he’s in Dalian, China to accept the award. Then he’s in Barcelona for the SAP 1st Global Business Transformation Academy conference. Then he’s in Rotterdam for a conference on machine-to-machine communications hosted

by Deutsche Telekom. As we speak via video link on 8 September, he goes into spiel mode, swigging from a big beaker of carry-out coffee, working through a 59-slide overview on the Living PlanIT offering. In characteristic style the spiel is dense and fast and eloquent, a bewildering mix of ICT architecture, the possibilities opened up by the “Internet of Things” and the astounding capabilities of the smart city concept they are developing. It also shows no sign of coming round to the questions I’d raised. After 12 minutes and 39 seconds I’m obliged to break in.

“When can we talk about the construction supply chain?”

There’s a pause.

“I’m just about to get to that.”

“Okay.”

There’s another pause, and he carries on but, again in characteristic style, he doesn’t get to that. Not in the concrete terms I’m fishing for, anyway.

When we broke this story in the UK industry press last year we reported Lewis’ claim that construction on the first phase of PlanIT Valley would begin in early 2011 and be finished within a year. It was a very ambitious schedule, and when it didn’t happen concerns naturally grew about how much else of the Living PlanIT proposition was of an overly optimistic nature.

To recap, Lewis claims that Living PlanIT and its growing “ecosystem” of partner companies will create totally smart buildings and cities impregnated with sensing, communications and remote actuation devices, powered by cloud computing, allowing for unprecedented control of waste and energy. Not only that, the buildings won’t really be

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Steve Lewis, CEO, Living PlanIT

“ONE OF THE CHALLENGES WHEN YOU WANT TO BRING MAJOR DEBT INTO A MARKET IS THAT DEBT LOVES POLITICAL STABILITY”

04 QUARTER 2011

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buildings anymore, primarily, they will be computing devices, “iBuildings”, like iPhones, allowing developers to get more money out of their built assets by facilitating the provision of software applications – “place apps” – to building occupants.

And if all that were not enough, Lewis claims they will revolutionise the whole construction process, bypassing BIM altogether with a powerful virtual design model connected electronically to a global supply chain of component manufacturers, so that construction becomes as streamlined as car, aircraft or cruise-ship manufacture. “When we throw up the buildings in PlanIT Valley in less than nine months, and they run at 80 percent less cost and they cost 30 percent less to deliver and we’ve proven it and proven it and proven it, how are you going to go build?” he challenged us last year.

TOP: Artist’s impression of structures in PlanIT Valley. Flexi-block modular, horizontal association. By architects Balonas Menano BELOW: Flexi-block modular, horizontal and vertical association, with flexi-skin variation. By architects Balonas Menano

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PORTUGAL’S WOES In requesting an interview I said I wanted to check on the physical progress at PlanIT Valley. I also said I wanted to know how the new-style construction supply chain was coming along since, from a construction point of view, this was a claim of the profoundest significance, seeming to promise the imminent obsolescence of the industry as it is configured today. Lewis had insisted that even the first wave of buildings would be constructed in this new way, so what sort of suppliers did Living PlanIT have agreements with? Materials, components, HVAC systems?

Spieling is a necessary part of Lewis’ job. He has a bold and complicated concept to sell to a vast number of diverse parties. For the Living PlanIT vision to be realised it needs

thousands of companies and organisations to buy in, not only to understand the model and its potential, but to invest hard cash and intellectual property. The sectors he is evangelising to range from leading-edge ICT, in all its forms, to engineering, design, bioscience, manufacturing, construction, real estate, urban planning, finance, government and more. A language capable of communicating easily to this broad audience probably doesn’t exist, and the technology and even the business arrangements underlying the Living PlanIT concept are in a state of flux. In such circumstances it is no doubt easier just to keep talking.

However, by degrees, Lewis allows himself to be diverted to the questions. Why is the site in the municipality of Paredes, a dozen or so miles east of Porto, still a 1,752-hectare expanse of vegetation, when wave 1 was supposed to be nearly finished by now?

This turns out to be easy to answer. As the eurozone debt crisis gathered pace Portugal was left exposed with its high public debt and slow economic growth. In 2010 several credit rating agencies downgraded its debt, prompting Socialist Party Prime Minister Jose Socrates to propose a series of austerity packages in late 2010 and early 2011, all of which parliament rejected. His position increasingly untenable, Jose Socrates resigned in March 2011, staying on in a caretaker capacity until elections could be held. These took place in June 2011, and saw the Social Democratic Party, led by Pedro Passos Coelho, coming top in the polls but not high enough to form a government. Coelho then set about forming a coalition with the Popular Party. All this took time.

Meanwhile, wave 1 of PlanIT Valley is ambitious. It sees close to 5,000 research and development people from the Living PlanIT partner organisations, plus their families, occupying nearly a million square metres of new built facilities on a 53-hectare plot. Scheduled for completion in 2015, it will have offices, shops, a school, a hotel, laboratories, homes, parks and leisure facilities. The investment is significant, so when 2011 dawned so bleakly in Portugal, the jitters set in.

“Governments don’t unravel in a day,” Lewis points out.

“They unravel over the course of 12 months, and one of the challenges when you want to bring major debt into a market is that debt loves political stability. We had a good sense that there was the potential for a shift in government. We felt it was better to play the patient game. So when the government went through its transition we felt the only right thing to do was to take the time and allow that to play out because fundamentally the debt markets are going to need that stability.”

“We had to bide our time and wait for the new prime minister to have his cabinet and everybody else in place,” he adds.

NEW START DATE: Q4 2011 But now they are ready to start. “In the fourth quarter of this year,” he says, “we’ll be moving things around and we’re also working with Buro Happold on the temporary structures to house the initial development team and so on. Obviously critical for us is that anything that touches that ground has to completely embody not only our brand promise but the capabilities, and so we’re making sure that we’re ready for race season and once we cut the tape we don’t stop.

“We want to make sure we get it right and my view, having launched product into the market before and then suffered the consequences of not spending the time in the planning, has made me a bit more conservative to date because once we do this we’ll be measured. People will forget very quick how exciting this will be if we screw things up. So we need to make sure we hit the ground running and do so in the best way we can.”

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“WHATEVER WE NEED TO PUT INTO OUR INITIAL BUILDINGS, WE HAVE”

RR Does Living PlanIT have all the necessary planning and environmental permissions?

“Yes. The way the law is structured in Portugal, if you’re building anything more than ten thousand square metres, you have to go through European legislated directives like anywhere else and you have to complete a forward environmental impact assessment which will take us some period of time, probably about six months. But we’ve done the initial environmental assessments for the first wave and for the first pieces of development, so we’re in very good shape there.

We had some good fortune in that the land parcels that we had selected don’t really have any major constraints on them.

“So the phase we’re in right now with the local and national government is getting the final issuance of licenses, which is why we’ve been meeting with them recently, just to make sure we’re in alignment because once we kick this thing off it’s not only our reputation that matters, it’s a project of national interest and we want to be able to achieve our goals with some pride.”

Local political backing of PlanIT Valley is solid. A driving force is the president of the Municipality of Paredes, Celso Ferreira, who has pushed for high-tech investment and job creation in the municipality since he was elected first in 2005, and then for another four-year term in 2009. According to a backgrounder report published in March 2010 by Harvard Business School, co-authored by Harvard Professor Robert Eccles, who also sits on the Living PlanIT board as a nonexecutive director, Celso Ferreira was already in discussions with Microsoft and a Portuguese specialty car maker about establishing a centre for high-tech electric vehicle manufacturing – an “automotive city” – in Paredes when Steve Lewis was introduced into the discussions in the spring of 2008. Out of that mix came the PlanIT Valley concept.

Says Lewis: “Bureaucracy has not really been a factor at all, specifically because our local governor, of the municipality, principally controls most of the planning steps.” He adds: “We’ve had the planning department on the inside of all our design and development work from the outset.”

Living PlanIT doesn’t actually own any of the land on the site yet, but Lewis maintains that the municipality has been acquiring rights to the land and that Living PlanIT can acquire each parcel as needed, a process which Lewis says takes “about two and a half minutes, when we walk into the bank”.

He adds that due to PlanIT Valley’s continuing status, conferred by the national government, as a Project of National Interest, any such land acquisitions are noninjunctionable.

PIPES, CLADDING, HVAC? And now what about the revolutionary new construction supply chain? Asked to rank from one to 10 the readiness – 10 being ready now – of a global web of parts manufacturers, instructed by a virtual model, supplying everything that goes into a building, Lewis estimates a readiness ranking of eight.

And what’s left to do? “We break ground,” he says.

“Whatever we need to put into our initial buildings, we have, and over time you’ll see more diversity in the channel,” he says. “What we did initially was choose those guys we felt were the leading edge players who had sufficient economic and geographical scale so that we could focus on those initially. We selected Philips Lighting Systems, one, because of their alignment with our vision for the use of LEDs both for city lighting as well as internal lighting was very strong. They had the breadth to be able to go execute. They had a view of converging on IP networks as the method by which control would be orchestrated. And that they had a need to be able to go simulate in more sophisticated ways not only the

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positioning of lighting but also the lighting study simulation space.”

What about the more mundane components? Pipes, cladding, HVAC? “If you’re producing the cladding systems which actually integrate the glass systems, we have a number of manufacturers, one of them is Spanish, another is Portuguese, that actually assemble those pieces together and deliver them as components. And what we do is pass down from our simulation the grade, style and quality of glass that gets bid through an electronic trading platform and we select goods for the right value that meet the right sort of specifications.”

He adds: “We are working with the world-leading company in glass and ceramics on the next wave of innovation in this space. In the first wave we’ll be consuming existing products but we are looking at much more exciting products over the next year or two that would integrate fibre optics sensing, nanotechnology, photovoltaic technology and a whole range of other things in the surface of those glass materials so you can start to do things like if you’ve got heat or light building up on the outside of a window it can pass a small current through the glass that will cause it to shade, and so on. Now we work with what is currently available but over time we’ll start applying more and more in everything from glass, ceramics, fibre-optic componentry, nanotechnology, instrumentation, all sorts of surface materials, liquids, right down to city hardware stuff.”

Pressed to supply names of suppliers ready to participate in the Living PlanIT supply chain, Lewis declines. “The reason we’ve been a bit coy about making announcements is that, one, if we want to have the type of big bang effect we intend to, you tend to bundle up those partners and make simultaneous announcements to a world audience versus dripping it out, which is counter-cyclical in terms of our benefits to the tech industry.”

PLENTY GOING ON Work on site at PlanIT Valley may have been delayed, but the Living PlanIT initiative has been anything but idle in 2011. For one thing it has been recruiting some impressive people. In February Frederic Romig joined as executive vice president of government affairs. Romig was formerly the Director of Sustainable Energy of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). With over 30 years in international energy trade and cooperation at the UN, he is well placed to turn governments on to the Living PlanIT message. And in July this year Eric Brisson, former director of IBM Software, joined as executive vice president of global product marketing.

They have also been busy cementing their technological ties. In March they announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft, integrating the latter’s Connected Government Framework with Living PlanIT’s Urban Operating System. And in May Living PlanIT appointed Cisco as the “master planner” for ICT design and architecture at PlanIT Valley. The collaboration with Cisco plugs Living PlanIT into R&D on the so-called Internet of Things, a concept which sees not just people connected by the Internet, but physical objects and devices as well, allowing them to interact with their environment – to become, in a limited sense, aware of what’s around them. Such capabilities would be key to Lewis’ vision of a really smart city. Also leading on the Internet of Things, or M2M, for “machine-to-machine” communications, is Deutsche Telekom. On September 28 Deutsche Telekom signed a partnership agreement with Living PlanIT. The press release said it was to “combine their expertise and partner eco-systems, and to address the challenges of connectivity in 04 QUARTER 2011

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WHO WILL BE WORKING AND LIVING IN PLANIT VALLEY It is planned that people living in PlanIT Valley will work in research and development for the firms and organisations, such as Microsoft and Cisco, plus SMEs and universities, who are part of the Living PlanIT “ecosystem”. Here is the number of R&D jobs, broken down by sector, estimated for PlanIT Valley in wave 1, with physical construction set to start in Quarter 4, 2011 and to be complete by 2015.

Information Communications Technology (ICT) 2104 Environment, Ecology & Renewable Energy 541 Building & Infrastructure 450 Health & Wellbeing 234 Sensors, Actuators & Nanotechnology 225 Retail & Hospitality 180 Entertainment & Gaming 151 Education 146 Security Systems 101 Automotive 100 Telematics 99 Power Tools, Construction & Industrial Equipment 99 Aerospace & Aeronautics 92 Transportation 84 Advisory Services 71 White Goods & Intelligent Appliances 48 Finance & Insurance 45 Public Administration 45 Source: Living PlanIT, August 2011

ABOVE RIGHT: Artist’s impression of flexi-block modular vertical association. By architects Balonas Menano

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04 QUARTER 2011

future urban environments”. On that day at Deutsche Telekom’s M2M Partner Event in Rotterdam, Living PlanIT showed virtual simulations of how its buildings respond to environmental factors and human usage.

“We showed a little bit of this,” says Lewis, “at the Cisco Live event, which was their main analysts’ briefing for the year in Las Vegas about a month ago or so now, which was received extremely well by the analyst community. And in that situation we were simulating a fire by basically torching wireless nodes which gave context to where that heat measurement was coming from and then we were using Philips lighting controls and sound system controls, with some others, to actually redirect people around the building based on the dynamic changes that were happening to the sensors.”

Living PlanIT certainly seems to be gaining traction on a range of fronts.

“We’re working with around a thousand [partners] now,” Lewis says. “Some of them are teeny, some of them are huge.

Thirty-eight to forty percent are large conglomerates in various sectors. The rest are small and mid-sized companies.

They tend to be the more innovative and the more hungry.

We’re working with some governments, including the UK, and some Middle East and Asian governments as well. We have a broad mix of venture capital partners, banking partners. Plus all, various industries.”

On September 14 the UK’s Technology Strategy Board announced £6 million in funding for nine new R&D projects in the field of “digital value chains”, one of them led by Living PlanIT, which certainly shows a recognition by government innovation funders. And then there was the World Economic Forum’s designation of Living PlanIT as a Technology Pioneer for 2012. According to the WEF the winners are chosen from more than 800 recommendations from around the world for “cutting edge technologies that transform business and society”.

And PlanIT Valley in Portugal is only one stream of Living PlanIT’s activities. “We’re setting up a research and incubation centre on the Greenwich Peninsula with a number of our partners,” Lewis says, “which will be based in the Quintain property there, where we’re building a hub, which will be very exciting for the UK. And we’re also exploring the same in Silicon Valley and out in the Far East. I would suspect that before the end of this year we will start disclosing exactly what we’re doing in Greenwich.”

But what about money? How is Living PlanIT staying afloat?

With plenty of private capital, Lewis says. “We’re at the moment deploying quite a lot of capital. We will continue raising capital for the next I don’t know how many years. This project will run out over six, seven, eight years [in Portugal] and we may get involved in other projects. We’ll start disclosing those sources once we’re ready, but all the money so far comes from excellent sources around the world.”

With all this going on it’s easy to see how niggles about the timing of preparatory groundworks in Paredes could be exasperating for Lewis. “Bear in mind,” he says, “we got to Portugal in June of 2008, started thinking in detail about the potential development structure in September of that year, and for a development of this scale to only be three or more years in is a remarkable feat in timing.”

He adds: “When we show the simulations later this month and then with the real integration of these things together I think people will sit back and not be saying when’s it going to happen but how long has it been happening and how do I get involved?”

“As recognised by the World Economic Forum we’re really getting some traction and moving and you don’t pick up those awards if you’ve not become of a critical scale and of a critical impact, and this is about getting it right and doing it in the most sincere way we possibly can which sometimes means we have to adjust our schedules a little bit.” icon

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18 | MADE IN CHINA SAN FRANCISCO BAY BRIDGE

TROUBLED BRIDGE OVER WATERS On target to be California’s most expensive public project, the iconic new east span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge has also been highly controversial, with its steel sections outsourced to China and its design pushing the boundaries of safety in a seismic zone. David Smith reports

Construction lights at dusk

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hen Professor Frieder Seible climbed the 525foot tower of the new East Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, he admired the panoramic view. But it wasn’t what you’d expect from a Californian bridge tower. San Francisco was nowhere to be seen, although Professor Seible could see rather a lot of China.

“I always tell people that from the tower of the new bridge I have seen Shanghai,” said Professor Seible who, as chair of the California Department of Transportation Seismic Advisory Board, visited the Chinese sites where the bridge’s steel units were being manufactured.

Professor Seible chuckles at his anecdote, but not everyone finds the idea of a Chinese company manufacturing the parts for an American bridge amusing. The United Steelworkers union (USW), in particular, is angry at the loss of American jobs and the resultant upskilling of foreign competition. And this is not the only controversy surrounding the biggest construction project in the history of California. It pushes the boundaries in design, as well. The bridge’s signature element, chosen for its aesthetic value, is the 2047-foot-long self-anchored suspension segment, which necessitated its 525-foot tower. Set to be the world’s tallest self-anchored suspension support, it has drawn criticism over its structural viability in a seismic zone. The

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1. San Francisco 2. Golden Gate Bridge 3. Oakland-Bay Bridge West span 4. Oakland-Bay Bridge East span 5. Oakland

California department of transportation has stuck to its guns, however, and the state’s engineering establishment insists the bridge is not only beautiful but safe. But with the final cost still spiralling upwards it raises the question, amid the American economic crisis, whether this will be the last iconic public structure of its kind for the foreseeable future.

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MADE IN CHINA When the contract for the steel sections was awarded to Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC) in 2005, it was easier, politically, for procurers to take a globalised, free-trade stand. The American economy was okay, with GDP growing at 3.2 percent and the official unemployment rate at 5 percent in October of that year. Then came the shock of 2009, when the economy shrank by 2.6 percent, unemployment doubled, officially, to 10 percent, prompting newly-elected President Obama to push a US$780-billion-plus economic stimulus package through Congress to try and keep Americans in work. Suddenly, the protectionist lobby had more powerful ammunition.

USW Legislative Counsel Linda Andros estimated that outsourcing the manufacture of the steel bridge segments 04 QUARTER 2011

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PROJECT CREDITS Joint Venture partners: Fluor, and American Bridge Design: T. Y. Lin International Architecture: Donald MacDonald Architects Wind tunnel testing: Rowan Williams Davies & Irwin Inc. Consulting: Weidlinger Associates Construction engineers: Construction Technologies & Engineering, Inc. Co-contractor: FCI Constructors, Inc; Kiewit Pacific Co; Manson Construction

TOP: The new bridge’s tower goes up as traffic continues along detours.

The old span was damaged by earthquake in 1989

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

LEFT: The east and west spans meeting on Yerba Buena Island

to China has cost between five and six hundred American jobs. The actual number, however, may have been much higher considering that the company chosen for the work, Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (ZPMC), put together an army of 3,000 employees to work on the project, including steel-cutters, welders, polishers and engineers.

The scale of the assignment was monumental. ZPMC built the main bridge tower, which was shipped to California in mid2009, and 28 bridge decks, which are triangular steel structures half the size of football pitches that serve as the platform for the roadways. All these units were built in China, then shipped 6,500 miles to Oakland. The final four sections were shipped in July this year.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), which is responsible for the new bridge, claimed that the American steel industry lacked the capacity to build such massive steel structures on schedule, whereas ZPMC could get the job done quickly. The argument goes that the saving of an estimated $400 million was a mere side benefit.

But USW’s Linda Andros dismissed the idea that speed of delivery was the deal-breaker. She said the US steel industry could have created the capacity and done the work on time had it been given the opportunity. In fact, an American joint venture (JV) of US steel fabricators bid on the unique bridge

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“THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CHINESE STEEL, OR AMERICAN STEEL. STEEL IS NOT CHEESE OR WINE”

sections and was pre-approved by Caltrans.

“In 2005, when the Chinese won the bid, they had no capacity to produce these unique bridge sections but after winning they built capacity. That’s precisely what the US Joint Venture was prepared to do,” she said, adding that, as a result of Caltrans’ largesse, the Chinese industry has developed its expertise at the expense of the US. “The Chinese Government now has the technology, jobs, revenue and capacity. So, if somebody else decides to build a unique bridge we’ve created a strong competitor, whereas we still don’t have the capacity. That’s why it was a pennywise and pound-foolish decision,” she said. “Caltrans says it was about speed of delivery, but it was really all about cost.

They didn’t apply for federal funding because the ‘Buy America’ provisos would have required purchasing more expensive steel and fabrication from US manufacturers.”

State sponsorship in China meant it was impossible for the American JV to compete on cost. “Of course, they under-bid us, as the company is really the Chinese Government,” she said. “It’s a low-cost country and they don’t have the same regulations. They pollute more, and have cheaper labour. Plus, the Chinese Government subsidizes it.”

But Bart Ney, the public relations officer for Caltrans, defended the outsourcing policy as the best way to build the huge structures on time.

“American Bridge, one of the engineering companies building the bridge, is a steel fabricator in Pittsburgh, yet they chose to have this work done by ZPMC because America did not, nor does it now, have the capacity to do the work in the time allotted,” he said.

Ney said Caltrans had tendered the self-anchored suspension (SAS) span twice to see if a domestic partner could be found, but to no avail. “Can you even call this outsourcing if the source does not exist?” he asked. “We would have had to build a new steel plant in the US and gone through the environmental permitting process for that in order to build the sections of the bridge. Forget the cost, because if we had had to build a new plant, we would not have got close to our schedule.”

He concluded: “The US has a talented and technically sophisticated steel industry, but currently lacks the capacity for this type of large steel component construction.”

The USW’s criticism of the outsourcing model, however, was not solely based on the alleged US capacity to do the work. USW President Leo Gerard has also cast doubt on the quality of Chinese steel. After rods collapsed on the bridge in 2009, raining 5,000 pounds of metal on traffic during rush hour, he said the Chinese were using “cheap steel” and vowed: “I ain’t driving my car over that damn bridge ever!”

The pieces that failed were two high-strength rods, a saddle and crossbars, all of which were part of the emergency repair done after inspectors discovered a crack in an “eyebar”, a structural beam. The parts that broke were holding a saddle-like cap that had been installed to strengthen the cracked eyebar. Authorities shut down the Bay Bridge in both directions for a week. Bart Ney said strong winds had played a role in the failure.

Despite the failure, Ney said the notion that Chinese steel was inferior to the US variety was a “myth”. “There is no such thing as Chinese steel, or American steel. Steel is not cheese or wine. It is a chemical composition that can be specified, tested and created anywhere in the world. This bridge is being inspected to levels beyond any other span that has come before it. A meticulous green-tagging process tracked all relevant fabrication data for every single piece.

“Over 300 American engineers, designers and inspectors RR

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RR lived in Shanghai and worked daily, hand-in-glove with their Chinese counterparts to ensure quality. Independent experts observed the whole process,” he said. But Ney’s argument, that American engineers ensured quality control, only gives more ammunition to the protectionists. Luis Alejo, a Californian assembly member, has argued that the supervising engineers taught their Chinese counterparts invaluable lessons which have made them more competitive.

HOW WE GOT HERE The need for a new East Bay bridge was evident after October 17, 1989, when the old bridge was damaged in the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake. A 50-foot section of the upper deck collapsed, indirectly causing one death. The East Span was closed for just over a month.

Only the East Span of the “Bay Bridge” needed replacing.

This is because the eight-mile-long Bay Bridge is actually two separate bridges, built between 1933 and 1936, separated by Yerba Buena Island located roughly in the middle of San Francisco Bay. The West Span Bridge, between San Francisco and Yerba Buena Island, was not affected badly by the 1989 earthquake and just needed a revamp. But the 2.2-mile long East Span, which runs from the island to Oakland, and is linked to the West Span by a concrete tunnel, was exposed as a fragile structure which could collapse in a severe earthquake.

A decision was made to build a new bridge and a joint

ABOVE: The tower comprises four independent legs connected by one of the project’s major innovations: shear link beams TOP RIGHT: Render showing self-anchored suspension span when complete

“THEY COULD HAVE SAVED BILLIONS JUST EXTENDING THE SKYWAY AND NOT HAVING THE SAS SIGNATURE SPAN, BUT AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS CAME INTO PLAY” www.iconreview.org

venture between two American companies, American Bridge and Fluor Enterprises, won the prime contract for the project in early 2006. Their bid specified getting steel from overseas to save money.

One of the major technical challenges faced by the contractors was building the new bridge whilst keeping the old one running alongside it. The Bay Bridge could not close as it is one of the US’s three busiest bridges, serving 280,000 vehicles a day. “Whole sections have been placed in the exact same footprint as the original bridge. This required massive detours to be constructed that also had to be built to resist earthquakes,” said Ney. An even greater technical challenge was posed by the bridge’s signature element, the 2047-feet long suspension segment, with its 525-foot tower, which is slightly higher than the tallest towers of the West Span.

ANCHORED TO ITSELF The new East Span, unlike the Golden Gate Bridge and the West Span of the Bay Bridge, is self-anchored, meaning it is not fixed to landfalls. The middle of the main cable is threaded underneath the western side of the East Span, with the two ends draped across the top of the tower before descending to the eastern side, where they are anchored in the concrete decks. The tower will be the world’s tallest self-anchored suspension support, which has led to criticism of the design.

The most vocal and influential critic has been Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He has repeatedly said the East Span will be vulnerable to earthquakes and said an anchored suspension bridge with an even number of towers would have been safer. “Single-tower suspension bridges are inherently unstable and become even more unstable when 04 QUARTER 2011

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they are self-supporting like the East Span Bridge,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle. “The main cable is connected to the deck, not the ground. It’s like anchoring a ship to itself, not to the sea bottom. The whole roadway is under such tremendous compression that any extra stress, like a quake or explosive charge, could make it collapse completely,” he said.

Professor Seible, who is also Dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), pointed out that Professor Astaneh-Asl’s views may not be impartial because Caltrans had rejected his rival design for the bridge. The San Francisco Weekly also reported that Professor Astaneh-Asl has been accused of “sour grapes” because his competing bridge design was among those rejected by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), although the professor denies he was “heartbroken” about it and says his criticisms are motivated by a concern for the personal safety of thousands of commuters.

Prof Seible stands by the bridge’s capacities. He has tested its structures, including the 525-foot tower, at UCSD’s research laboratories. These boast the world’s only outdoor shake table, which has a 2,000-tonne payload, allowing fullscale testing. “For the East Span Bridge we needed all our capacity to get the correct damage patterns and failure modes to measure earthquake performance,” he said. “We tested the components mainly at full-scale, and the smallest scale for this bridge was one in four.”

He said the results were incontrovertible: “We showed in every case that all the components where you might expect inner-lasting damage were resistant to at least double the capacity required.”

STURDY, ELEGANT LEGS The tower, which Professor Astaneh was so worried about, is protected from a severe earthquake by its clever, illusory design. It appears to be one tower, but comprises four independent legs connected by one of the whole project’s major innovations, shear link beams.

“They act like fuses during an earthquake. Each of the legs can move independently with the massive ground motions generated by a 1,500-year earthquake,” said Ney. The shear link beams comfortably passed Professor Seible’s testing procedures. “Our tests showed the shear link beams will deform and absorb the energy so the tower remains functional during an earthquake. Again we tested it successfully to twice the displacement predicted for the biggest earthquake,” said Prof Seible. “The damaged component can even be taken out

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SOME OUTSTANDING POINTS OF THE SAN FRANCISCO-OAKLAND BAY BRIDGE ●

The largest self-anchored suspension (SAS) span in the world when it opens in 2013

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The SAS will be the first of its type to have its cables angled in multiple directions. The Shandong Jiaozhou Bay Bridge in China has slightly angled main cables centrally located

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The first suspension bridge to be free hanging and not have its decks connected to the main tower

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First bridge to use fusable links in its main tower

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First bridge to use kevlar in suspender cables

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The SAS has the world’s largest steel saddle on top of the main tower for any suspension bridge

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The Western foundation for the SAS on YBI has the largest isolation casing in the world

and replaced under full traffic because the tower is between the two roadways so the crew would not be working above the roadway at all. After the earthquake they simply unbolt and replace the damaged beams.”

Unlike its capacity to withstand an earthquake, the tower’s aesthetic beauty was never in doubt. Its SAS design blends with California’s other signature bridge structures, the Golden Gate and the West Spans of the Bay Bridge. “It becomes a fifth tower and continues that catenary line through the Yerba Buena Island tunnel and on towards Oakland,” said Ney. “It had to be a world-class architectural structure so it would be at home in an environment that boasts the most famous suspension bridge in the world – the Golden Gate – and two of the world’s longest suspension bridges in the Bay Bridge’s own two West Spans.”

The East Span Bridge’s duel success, firstly as a work of engineering resistant to earthquakes, secondly as a work of architecture which delights the eye, is down to its asymmetricality, according to Bart Ney. “This fact that it is asymmetrical allowed us to place the foundation of the main tower in solid bedrock and at the same time give the bridge an inspiring geometry featuring a beautiful long main span. The SAS is both elegant and practical for these reasons,” he said.

Though Professor Seible has faith in both the bridge’s engineering and aesthetic charms, he was against the design when he sat on the original Engineering and Design Advisory Panel (EDAP). And he was not alone in opposing the design.

All the engineers in the EDAP group favoured a cable stayed bridge - which has one or more columns, with cables supporting the bridge deck – as a far more economical option. “They could have saved billions just extending the skyway and not having the SAS signature span, but aesthetic considerations came into play and the architects pushed for it,” he said.

“One of the strongest opponents was the great engineer Tung-Yen Lin, who founded the company Ty Lin, one of the major contractors working on the bridge. He thought the architects’ decision was ‘stupid’,” said Professor Seible. Lin’s views are worth taking seriously, he said. The Chinese-born engineer led in standardising the use of pre-stressed concrete, and among his accomplishments are the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco and the Kuan Du Bridge in Taiwan. Lin died in 2003 but Professor Seible believes he would have had a different view of the East Span design today. “I am convinced that if he had seen my test results, he would have changed his mind,” said Professor Seible.

Whether or not the bridge is worth the extra billions of dollars is a matter of opinion, says Professor Seible. Although no one knows exactly what the final price tag will be. The price has kept on rising since the initial 1997 estimate of $1.1 billion for a simple viaduct. That figure climbed to $2.6 billion in July 2005 for a design including a tower span, then to $6.2 billion in July 2005. Now it stands at $7.2 billion, according to The New York Times, a figure not disputed by Caltrans, which makes it the most expensive construction project in California’s history.

Ney believes the project will be worth the extra billions when it finally opens in September, 2013, having originally been scheduled for 2007. “The iconic part of the new east span is the SAS. The Skyway, Oakland Touchdown (OTD) and Yerba Buena Island transition (YBI) take their architectural cues from the SAS,” Ney said. “Just innovating what was needed seismically took years to achieve and build. Since we had to spend the time and money anyway, the region and the state opted to build an iconic structure with double the life span of a traditional new bridge (150 years).” icon

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PROPPING UP A PYRAMID After an earthquake compromised the internal stability of the 4,700-yearold step pyramid of the Pharaoh Djoser, the Egyptian authorities were not sure what to do. But a plucky engineering entrepreneur from Wales has convinced the Supreme Council on Antiquities to accept his proposal first to use airbags to prevent further collapse and then to use special grouted steel bars to give the pyramid some backbone. Rod Sweet reports

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ou might not think a Welsh engineer would have much to offer in the remediation of a damaged Egyptian pyramid, but Peter James does.

In the 27th Century BC, while the early Britons were making their circular huts and mysterious stone circles, the Egyptian Pharaoh Djoser was overseeing construction of his grand, final resting place, the monumental step pyramid built in the necropolis of Saqqara, northwest of the city of Memphis. It is considered to be the first such pyramid made of stone, and was built under the direction of the famous architect and polymath, Imhotep. At the centre of this 62metre-high structure is a burial shaft extending 29 meters below ground level, and at the bottom of this shaft lies the sarcophagus – the big stone coffin – of the Pharaoh Djoser.

It lay there, plundered by grave robbers but structurally intact, for nearly 4,700 years. Then in 1992 an earthquake hit northern Egypt. Aside from the external damage it caused to the Djoser Pyramid, the quake exposed a significant structural vulnerability on the inside. In later pyramid designs corbelling techniques – stone props or shelves – were used to support the “lid” of the burial chamber to keep the weight

1932 photograph from burial chamber floor showing the ceiling with timber props www.iconreview.org

The main contractor works on pointing the exterior of the Djoser pyramid damaged by earthquake of the stones above from falling through into the shaft. But the constructors of this early pyramid made a flat ceiling propped up with timber. This is comparatively weak and evidence suggests the ceiling had given way before, with timber used to shore the structure up again. The earthquake caused the ceiling to collapse, bringing nearly 200 tonnes of stone and rubble down into the chamber.

The sarcophagus survived, and the mass of stone pressing into the chamber locked itself into a temporary plug – the way three people barging into a room at once will tend to get stuck in the doorway – but it is unstable. Rocks keep falling as the mass above continues to settle. The 29-metre burial chamber is now around 35 metres tall, having lost six metres of ceiling. If nothing is done the plug will eventually give way, filling the chamber with many more hundreds of tonnes of stone, destroying the sarcophagus and threatening even the partial inward collapse of the pyramid.

For years the Egyptian Ministry of Culture has reviewed remedial action. Egypt has limited money for such major work, but a bigger issue has been just knowing what to do.

Now, however, the ministry has accepted a surprising solution, proposed by a specialist engineering firm from Wales, UK. This solution involves using strong, inflatable airbags to stabilise the burial shaft ceiling and then binding the mass of loose rocks into a permanent plug by sewing it together with scores of expandable stainless steel rods. RR 04 QUARTER 2011

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“IF YOU KNOCK ANY OF THOSE STONES LOOSE IT MIGHT BE THE KEYSTONE HOLDING IT ALL IN PLACE AND THE WHOLE LOT WILL COME TUMBLING DOWN ONTO YOUR HEAD”

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RR The man behind this ingenious – if it works – solution is Peter James FCIOB, founder and managing director of Cintec, based in Newport, Monmouthshire. In fact, though, Cintec is no stranger to Egypt. Since 1996 the company has been repairing and reinforcing ancient mosques and Pharaonic temples with its unique system that uses stainless steel bars inserted into masonry. The bars are covered in a fabric sock which is injected with expandable grout that bonds with the host material, effectively strengthening compromised blockbuilt structures.

Peter James’ involvement with structural engineering began when he took charge of building services for Cardiff council in Wales. He then set up his own company developing solutions to reinforce 1960s residential tower blocks. His moment in the limelight came when Cintec was awarded the contract to repair Windsor Castle in the UK following a major fire in 1993. Cintec has since worked on the Canadian Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and even the Red Pyramid near Giza.

DEADLY GAME OF JENGA The company was first brought in to propose solutions to the Djoser Pyramid problem in 2006. James says there was a reluctance on the part of the authorities to use foreign companies, preferring to use local contractors where possible.

In addition the debate had centred around building a permanent timber structure from the base of the shaft rising to the ceiling and supporting the ceiling over its entire height.

That solution was finally rejected in 2007 in favor of Cintec’s proposals. James says timber would not have worked because the situation in the shaft is like an inverted, and deadly, form of the game Jenga: “The problem with timber is how you actually lock it into the hanging stone. If you knock any of those stones loose it might be the keystone holding it all in place and the whole lot will come tumbling down onto your head.” Furthermore, any flat ceiling using timber beams or flat arch type construction was doomed to fail. The shear weight of the stones above would certainly cause the timbers to deflect and eventually collapse.

The pyramid was built in stages. Initially, it was a square, single-platform mastaba, which was the traditional method of capping the underground burial chambers. (Mastaba means bench in Egyptian.) Other layers were added until the final, six-step pyramid emerged. This structure of stone and clay rises to 62 metres above the plateau and contains 330,400 cubic metres of material. In transforming the original mastaba into a pyramid it is believed that the builders built a rough central core of stones with a fine limestone outer casing.

“WHEN WE WERE ABLE TO GAIN DIRECT ACCESS TO THE DAMAGED CEILING IT WAS BLOODY TERRIFYING” It would also appear that after the pyramid was formed it was increased in size and proportion at a later time. Evidence of this can be seen in the burial chamber. Part of the exposed inner lining is a flush face indicating an extension to the original shape and size of the pyramid.

The burial chamber is situated close to the centre of the pyramid and is approximately 7.8m square and 29m high, the ceiling level being slightly lower than the outside ground level.

There are three direct entrances into the burial chamber. The high level entrance being accessed from an entrance at

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LEFT: Model showing the burial shaft in relation to the Pyramid.

TOP LEFT: As of midOctober work was underway pointing and hand packing the hanging stones to stabilise them prior to drilling. Cairo University did tests to identify the right mortar.

Tubes are used for injecting extra grout into cavities behind ground level. The other two are via tunnels that take a circular route beneath the burial chamber and are a mixture of official and unofficial excavations from antiquity – possibly, James suggests, the builders returning to rob the chamber.

The first challenge was to shore up the ceiling and prevent further rock-falls. The Cintec proposal was to secure the hanging remnants of stone that formed a rough internal cupola with the firm’s own structural air support system developed for a new product known as Waterwall, developed to mitigate blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using water.

A former Royal Navy lieutenant-commander in the reserves at the time of the Falklands War, James had experience of using water to mitigate explosions. In fact, the dynamic between water and explosives fascinated him from the tender age of 11, when a film crew came to Royal Air Force Base Scampton in Lincolnshire, UK, to shoot scenes for The Dam Busters, the hit movie released in 1955. James, whose father was an RAF commander, was based there at the time. The boy absorbed everything he could about engineer Barnes Wallis’s ingenious designs for a bomb that would bounce on water, smack into the wall of a dam and then roll down it underwater before exploding.

Considerable testing in the late 1990s had proved that if water could be harnessed in as near its natural form as possible it could defeat blast waves and fragmentation. In the case of “dirty bombs” carrying contaminants Waterwall had the added advantage of providing a medium to carry

TOP RIGHT: A cluster of three bags supports the ceiling in a particularly dangerous spot BELOW RIGHT: 50-mmthick foam sheets are used above the bags to match precisely the profile of the hanging rocks

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the monument if the bags were punctured.

The Cintec reinforcing and anchoring system was well known in Egypt and had been used on many Islamic and Pharaonic monuments since 1997. However the Egyptian Supreme Council on Antiquities was interested in Cintec’s ability to support the dangerous hanging stones with air-filled bags because it avoided applying the sort of upward pressure that might unlock the stone jam and release a pyramidical avalanche. Even Cintec’s proprietary lift bags made from Kevlar wouldn’t work, as they would be too stiff, and might cause the hanging stones to lift and move and unlock.

Mechanical props were rejected for the same reason.

antidotes to any contaminants used by the bomber.

Waterwall uses heavily reinforced PVC fabric containers to produce a wall of water of any desired shape. For large spans or beams of Waterwall an air support system of the same structural characteristics was needed immediately beneath the water. At the Djoser pyramid, although the system is called Waterwall, air was chosen to fill the bags because water is too heavy and there was also the danger that it might flood

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GOING IN With Cintec’s approach approved in theory, it was time to go in and work out in detail how to do the job. An immediate problem was the 150 to 200 tons of loose stone, rubble and supporting timber that had fallen down and completely covered the sarcophagus. Tunnels beneath the sarcophagus were a cause for concern as these had to be traced and checked for stability and would need to be strengthened before any temporary scaffolding could be used in the burial chamber above. During the removal of the debris it was considered too dangerous to lift the fallen stone over the sarcophagus through the high level entrance as this could cause partial collapse to the burial chambers inner walls at that level.

It was finally decided to remove all the fallen stones and beams through the lower tunnels to reduce the risk RR www.iconreview.org

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RR of damage to the burial chamber. This was extremely labour intensive and had to be done under the supervision of archaeological specialists who examined all the material as it was removed for historical interest.

Following the clearance of the stone surrounding the sarcophagus it was discovered that the random stone piers that supported the sarcophagus were in poor condition and these had to be stabilized by traditional methods.

After stabilizing the sarcophagus it was necessary to provide a scaffold bridge across the sarcophagus so that there were no imposed loads on the monument. This was also necessary to avoid undue loading on the existing tunnels beneath the base of the burial chamber. This was undertaken with great care by a subcontractor, Acrow Misr, who then went on to erect its steel support system scaffolding from the bottom of the chamber up to 1000mm below the original ceiling level. This tall scaffolding would support the Cintec airbags.

With the scaffolding in place engineers could at last get a good look at the condition of the ceiling. Up to then they could only view from the chamber floor some 35 metres below, or at the high level entrance at an acute angle which only gave a skewed, two dimensional view of the problem. “When we were able to gain direct access to the damaged ceiling it was bloody terrifying,” recalls James. “The rocks hanging there were huge.

Plus, we saw that we had to construct another lift of scaffold at the very centre of the chamber because we had not anticipated the depth of failure of the internal rock collapse.

And we could see in great detail a large crack that bisected the pyramid through the burial chamber.”

While this work was in progress Cintec had made 11 air bags 1.5m high by 1m in diameter from its Waterwall range www.iconreview.org

of products. A condition of the Cintec proposal was that the air bags were tested to three tons under the supervision of the Egyptian consultant engineers who signed a test certificate for each individual bag. The design of the bags is Cintec’s own. Each is constructed from internally reinforced drop-stitch material that is assembled in layers. The external material is PVC and is flexible enough to give a soft contact with the stone without buckling under the load.

How can steel scaffolding and bags designed to support three tons keep 62 metres of pyramid from crashing down into the burial shaft? James admits that it’s not really 62 metres of stone above that the system is supporting.

“It’s like making a sand castle at the beach,” he explains.

“If the sand isn’t right or you haven’t added enough water you lift up the bucket and the sand collapses to its angle of natural repose. The finer or more slippery the sand, the slacker the angle. So it’s not all three hundred thousand cubic metres bearing down on the chamber ceiling. It’s going to be less. But the tricky thing is we don’t know what’s up there. Is it solid and stable or are there big voids? It could be porous, like an Aero bar, itching to settle all the time.”

TOP: Egyptian formwork contractor Acrow Misr erected a 34-metre-high steel structure to support the Cintec airbags

JUST A GENTLE KISS Working in such close and difficult conditions, and having to take special care in a monument of such historic importance, it wasn’t until late 2010 that everything was in place to begin positioning and inflating the bags. Then work was halted amid the popular uprisings that gripped Egypt in January 2011 and toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February. However, the Ministry of Culture allowed work to resume in May, and such is the perceived urgency of the work that, according to James, 04 QUARTER 2011

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PROPOSED ANCHOR ARRANGEMENT FOR BURIAL CHAMBER

1. Centre line of shaft 2. Anchors 3. Stainless steel main reinforcing 4. 52-mm-wide drilled holes for rods 2000mm to 4000mm long 5. 32-mm-wide drilled holes for rods 750 mm long to secure stainless steel mesh 6. Burial chamber shaft 1

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the Djoser Pyramid is so far the only restoration project to have restarted after the revolution.

Having established a suitable height for the scaffolding Cintec were then able to place the airbags in the best positions to support the hanging stones. In order to provide continuity of support through to the scaffold it was necessary to use timber shims below the bags and a high-density, semirigid foam above. The 50-mm foam sheets were cut and dressed around each individual hanging stone to match its profile above each bag.

The airbags were positioned at the most critical positions in the chamber. Each bag was connected to a manifold and could be pressurised as a group or individually depending on the prevailing site circumstances. Each bag was then inflated at a low pressure to one psi to form its shape and overall dimensions usually on solid timber sole plates to transfer the loads onto the scaffold. The pressure was then slightly increased and the top of the airbag was adjusted to the ceiling profile to give the best support. At the same time the semi-rigid foam was offered up to match any void between the top of the air bag and the stone ceiling.

Says James: “It was only necessary to have a very soft fit between the semi-rigid foam, the air bag and the stone. One

“THE TRICKY THING IS WE DON’T KNOW WHAT’S UP THERE. IS IT SOLID AND STABLE OR ARE THERE BIG VOIDS? IT COULD BE POROUS, LIKE AN AERO BAR, ITCHING TO SETTLE ALL THE TIME” icon

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could say a gentle kiss, with no compression of the existing hanging stones over the entire area of the meter diameter air bag.” The air bags were then inflated to their final working pressure of 8 psi.

The condition of the perimeter of the square chamber and its interface with the burial chamber walls was causing some concern so it was decided and approved to make seven other small panel bags of varying sizes and heights that would be used at the very edge of the burial chamber walls picking up the defective ceiling at that level. These bags were made at the Cintec plant and sent out for installation within two weeks.

These have now been positioned on site.

MAKING THE PLUG PERMANENT With the airbags now inflated, it is hoped they will act as the few, brave ancient Greek soldiers holding off the swarming Persian army in the narrow mountain pass at Thermopylae.

Cintec is now preparing for the final phase of the operation, and the most sensitive: turning the jumble of stone pressing down into the burial shaft into a strong and permanent plug by sinking 62 stainless steel anchors, some up to 4m in length, and a greater number of shorter ones, into the stones to bind the mass together. “Slowly, slowly we dry-diamond drill a pattern of anchors across, creating from the top of the chamber a domed arch that is 14m in diameter, much bigger than the 8mx8m opening to the chamber,” James says.

These anchors are the “special sauce” of the Cintec approach. The name “Cintec” is derived from the process of the controlled (“C”) injection (“IN”) of the grout. But what about the drilling of more than 62 deep holes into the suspended rubble? Is he not worried this will bring it down onto their heads?

“Yes,” is James’s simple reply. “That’s why the first phase will be to point and hand pack all the hanging stones to provide a stable and solid surface to stabilise and consolidate the ceiling and to prevent stones from moving when we start drilling.” He says that many tests were undertaken on site and at Cairo University to establish an appropriate mortar for this work. This has now been completed and the pointing began in the last week of September and is programmed to finish eight weeks later.

When that is done engineers will drill a test hole in a corridor close to the chamber to monitor the vibrations and analyse the dust created to learn more about the material they are drilling into. Then they will move into the chamber itself and begin drilling the first “live” bore hole as near as possible to a stabilising airbag. They will drill very slowly, at about a quarter of the normal rate. They will start at the perimeter of the chamber and sink anchors all the way around it, then move one metre in and repeat until they work their way into the centre, the most dangerous part.

The anchoring and consolidation will take another eight weeks to complete. A small gauge stainless steel mesh will then be secured to the anchor to provide a final screen to prevent any small friable material from dropping to the burial chamber floor.

It is hoped that once the exercise is complete the burial chamber will be much more secure than the ancient sage Imhotep managed to make it. Cintec engineers tested the socked anchor system on several large fallen stones recovered from the bottom of the burial chamber. After seven days an average test load of 28 kilonewtons (kN) was achieved, some 11 kN above the anticipated result. Peter James chuckles at the thought of a Welsh engineering solution used to solve an ancient Egyptian problem. “If you want your Pyramids done, come to Wales,” he quips. icon www.iconreview.org

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28 | PROJECT NEWS MIDDLE EAST INFRASTRUCTURE

FOSTER + PARTNERS UNVEILS DESIGNS FOR KUWAIT INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT RESPONSIVE to the climate of one of the hottest places on earth, the design for Kuwait International Airport’s new terminal building, unveiled in October by Foster + Partners, aims for LEED ‘gold’ rating, and if it succeeds it will be the first passenger terminal in the world to attain this level of environmental accreditation.

Toward that end the concrete structure provides thermal mass and the roof incorporates a large expanse of photovoltaic panels to harvest solar energy.

Kuwait International Airport is planned to boost capacity and establish a new regional air hub in the Gulf. In 2010 just over 8 million passengers traveled through the existing airport. The new one will initially accommodate 13 million passengers per year, with the flexibility to increase to 25 million passengers.

The terminal plan comprises three symmetrical wings of departure gates. Each façade spans 1.2 kilometres and all extend from a dramatic 25-metre-high central space. For simplicity and ease of use there are few level changes. To further aid orientation the building is planned under a single roof canopy, punctuated by glazed openings that filter daylight while deflecting solar radiation. The canopy extends to shade a generous entrance plaza and is supported by tapering concrete columns.

Nikolai Malsch, a partner at Foster + Partners, said: “We look forward to continuing to work with the Ministry of Public Works and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation Kuwait on the planning and design of the new airport. We have established an excellent working relationship with our client – we have a shared goal to create a terminal that is an exemplar of sustainable design and will establish Kuwait as the region’s leading air hub.”

TPS LEADS DESIGN ON NEW AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TOWER IN OMAN BRITISH specialist consultant TPS has started work on a new development at Muscat International Airport, Oman, which will include an iconic air traffic control tower, an air transport management complex, a contingency and training centre, plus fire and sea rescue facilities.

Comprising 11 new buildings with associated external works, the project is procured under a design & build contract and is part of a wider redevelopment scheduled for completion in 2014, which will allow the airport to handle 12 million visitors per year.

Standing at just less than 100 metres in height the new control tower will be the tallest occupied building in the capital Muscat. Wind will cause the slender structure to sway so TPS, principal consultant to the project, has brought in Mott Macdonald and RWDI to help with detailed design for all the structural elements and also to determine the performance parameters for a suitable damping mechanism.

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Working with the Oman-based construction company Carillion Alawi, TPS and its subconsultants are overseeing their design being implemented during the construction process which will include the installation of a tuned mass damper, or a suitable alternative, to harmonise the predicted oscillations with the structure’s natural frequency.

The Air Transport Management Complex (ATM) comprises three buildings linked by a central hub housing the three-storey entrance foyer with lifts and stairs to all three levels. The main function of the ATM is the Area Control Centre which is accommodated in the northernmost wing in a voluminous, extensively serviced, double-storey space, highly insulated from external visual and audible distractions.

An obscured glazed gallery provides visiting parties the opportunity to observe operations without

distracting the air traffic controllers. The east and west wings accommodate a variety of supporting functions including offices, laboratories, classrooms, studios, workshops, and staff welfare facilities including pantries, gymnasia, dining area, and prayer rooms, plus a meteorological department with a studio from which national weather forecasts are intended to be broadcast.

The Contingency and Training Centre is located adjacent to the ATM Complex and accommodates the operational and technical training facilities comprising classrooms, offices, meeting rooms, simulators and other airport related support functions. A 100-person capacity auditorium forms a key facility to the C&T Centre and visual hub.

The airport development, funded by

At just less than 100 metres high the new control tower will be the tallest occupied building in Muscat

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Building under construction at the 31-hectare Msheireb Downtown regeneration site in Doha

The concrete structure provides thermal mass and a large expanse of photovoltaic panels on the roof harvests solar energy

The Air Transport Management Complex comprises three buildings linked by a central hub the Oman’s Ministry of Transport and Communication, is part of a long term strategy to diversify Oman’s economy away from oil, boosting business, leisure tourism and supporting the national airline Oman Air. Piling and earthworks started in April 2011, with all buildings in this part of the scheme scheduled to be finished by the end of October 2012.

Regional Director of TPS, Hanif Macci, said: “The key challenges for us are to develop designs in parallel, whilst meeting the different project objectives to a tight timescale. We also have to manage design interfaces for the timely flow of

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information with designers of other contracts for the airport development.”

To meet these challenges, TPS has established a design co-ordination team in Muscat to interact with the client’s design approval team and to engage in face-toface communications with local authorities and third party designers, communicating relevant information to design teams in the UK and Dubai.

TPS is developing the multi-disciplinary design for this project for the contractor, appointed on the basis of Design Intent prepared by the COWILarsen Joint Venture on behalf of the Ministry for Transport and Communication and Muscat International Airport.

The overall airport development project beyond TPS’ scope of work comprises main contracts including civil engineering works for a new runway, taxiways and aircraft parking aprons, a new passenger terminal, a new Civil Aviation HQ and IT and systems integration.

FOSTER + PARTNERS

FUTURISTIC VACUUM RUBBISH CHUTES SPECIFIED FOR DOHA REGENERATION PROJECT THE UNDERGROUND vacuum waste management system, Envac, has been specified for Msheireb Downtown, a 31hectare mixed-use regeneration project in Doha, Qatar.

Envac will manage the waste for almost 100 buildings including offices, residential and civic developments, shops, three hotels, three mosques, and a school. Three vertical chutes, one each for organic waste, dry waste and mixed recyclables, will be installed in every residential building with three waste inlets located on each floor.

Once waste is in the pipe network it will be sucked through at speeds up to 70kph for distances as long as 2km to a central waste station, where it will be sorted and taken away.

A similar system from Envac has been specified by the UK’s Quintain Estates & Development for its Wembley City development in London.

Designed by Allies & Morrison, John McAslan + Partners, Adjaye Associates and Mossessian and Partners, Msheireb Downtown is expected to be completed in 2016 following an investment in excess of US$5bn.

The developers, Msheireb Properties, claim that Msheireb Downtown, launched in 2009, will have the highest concentration of LEED certified buildings in the world. The developers are aiming for the entire site to be designated a LEED Certified Neighborhood Development.

The development has 12 sustainability objectives that include maximising use of microclimate, reduction of car use, maximising water and energy efficiency, reduction of carbon emissions as well as facilitating community interaction and social exchange.

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30 | MARKETS EAST AFRICA

AFRICA’S NEW AGE OF RAIL For decades the old railway networks of East Africa have been creaking toward obsolescence. But now more than 6,000 kilometres of new lines are planned, knitting together a region nearly the size of Western Europe and liberating the “stranded resources” of the land-locked interior. Shem Oirere reports

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new wave of investment in rail is gaining momentum in Eastern Africa. Under the ambitious masterplan, new and refurbished lines will fan out from the Indian Ocean coast, knitting more closely together a region nearly the size of Western Europe, comprising Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, and reaching even further into Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Driving the initiative is a desire to liberate the “stranded resources” of fossil fuels and metals in the vast, land-locked interior through the ports of Mombasa in Kenya and Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam and Mtwara. China is playing a key role, priming the pump with finance and development deals but others are now following suit. There is genuine local dynamism as well, sparked by robust economic growth, intraregional cooperation and a rolling back of state bureaucracy and interference.

A total of 6,100 km of rail links have been approved or have commenced construction, with some expected to be ready by 2020. They comprise 4,700 km of single lines and 1,400 km of double lines. The projects are part of a larger East African Railway Masterplan developed two years ago by transport consultancy firm CPCS Transcom International Limited under a contract awarded by the East African Community (EAC), which promotes political and economic integration.

Some agreements have already been signed for the construction, or redesign and reconstruction, of the links under build-operate-transfer or build-own-operate-transfer models, meaning increased input from the private sector. The fervent hope here is that the momentum gathers pace because one of the biggest barriers to development in Africa today is the lack of reliable and affordable infrastructure.

7.2% for the same period last year, but the Deloitte analysis is optimistic about the country’s economic performance in coming months.

Almost all countries in the region have in the last three years ensured macroeconomic stability and increased participation of the private sector through increased credit.

Further factors have combined to create a new imperative for cheaper, more efficient means of transport across the region and out into the world. These include growing production of cement in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, spurred by heightened construction activity in the region; the discovery of oil in Uganda in 2009 and of gas and iron ore in Tanzania in 2007; and the creation of the oil-rich but landlocked state of South Sudan in July this year.

LAMU TO JUBA The most ambitious project is Kenya’s 1,200-km, standardgauge line linking the port of Lamu to Juba, the capital of oilrich and newly independent South Sudan. A branch is also planned to connect with Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. The US$8.1billion rail line is part of a bigger infrastructure project known as LAPPSET, for Lamu-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport corridor. Estimated to cost $16 billion, LAPPSET also encompasses a major highway, oil pipeline and fibre-optic cable linking Kenya with Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan.

Japan Port Consultants have finished a one-year feasibility study for LAPPSET, which envisages a new port facility in Lamu. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki is expected RR

Passengers board a Rift Valley Railways train in Nairobi. The old, narrowgauge Mombasa-Kampala line is set for a $280million refurbishment

ROBUST GROWTH The economic performance of the region is yet another sign that the so-called “global economic crisis” is really a crisis for the developed West. In the last two years East African economies recorded impressive growth. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda have posted growths of between 5% and 7% between 2009 and the second quarter of 2011.

In Kenya, which has the largest economy in the region, growth plummeted from 7% in 2007 to 1.6% in 2008 because of post-election violence in which more than 1,300 people were killed and 300,000 displaced from their homes.

Although the violence is the subject of an ongoing International Criminal Court case, the country’s economy bounced back in 2010 to record 5.6% growth. A 2011 Economic Outlook report by Deloitte linked Kenya’s rapid recovery to tourism, increased investment in infrastructure and lowered interest rates.

The Ugandan economy expanded from 5.5% in 2009 to 6.3% last year, driven, according to finance minister Maria Kiwanuka, by high-performing telecommunications and financial services sectors. In the second quarter of 2011, Tanzania’s growth may have shrunk to 6.7% compared to www.iconreview.org

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Addis Abeba

Juba

SUDAN

Gulu

Pakwach

MAJOR RAIL PROJECTS IN EAST AFRICA

ETHIOPIA

Bunia

UGANDA

KENYA

SOMALIA

Tororo

Lamu to Juba and Addis Ababa This 1,720-km line is part of the larger Lamu corridor project to be launched by Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki in November. The $8.1-bn high-speed railway runs from Lamu to Juba in oil-rich South Sudan. It will have a branch from Archer's Post in northern Kenya to Nairobi and another linking Lamu port to Mombasa port. A feasibility study by Japanese firm Japan Port Consultants was completed earlier this year. Kenyan authorities say the project is likely to be completed by 2020. The railway will give South Sudan, cut off from the sea now that it is independent, access to the world through the port of Lamu. China and Germany have expressed interest in the entire Lamu corridor project, but the government has not struck a deal with any contractor yet.

Mombasa to Kampala This 1,170 kilometer standard-gauge railway line will run alongside the existing, narrow-gauge Kenya-Uganda railway.

Costing an estimated US$4.5 billion, construction is scheduled to start September 2012.

Commissioning of the Mombasa-Nairobi stretch and the Kisumu-Malaba section is slated for August 2014 and August 2017 respectively if all goes to

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Jinja

Bihanga

Kisangani

Kampala Kasese

Malaba Nakuru

Port Bell

Garissa Kisumu

CONGO Nairobi

Bukoba Musoma

RWANDA Kigali

Lamu

Keza Mwanza

BURUNDI

Moshi

Bujumbura

Voi Tavata

Arusha

Musongali

Mombassa

Isaka

Kigoma

Kalua

Uvinza

Tabora

Tanga

Korogwe

TANZANIA

Mpanda

Kilosa Dar es Salaam

KEY Existing Ferry Proposed new To be rehabilitated

Sumbawanga

Msolwa

Mbeya Mlimba Tunduma

ZAMBIA

Liganga

Mtwara

Mchuchuma Mbamba Bay

MOZAMBIQUE

plan. The project also has provision for extension to Rwanda's capital, Kigali. It will have capacity for passenger trains with speeds of 160km/h and 120km/h for freight.

Mtwara to Mchuchuma and Liganga This proposed 850-km line will link the new coal fields at Mchuchuma and the new iron mines in Liganga to the sea – in the case of Liganga, by

connecting it to the existing Tazara line at Mlimba, while Mchuchuma coal will go to Mtwara. China has signed a $3 billion deal with Tanzania for the development of the mines and construction of the railway. Both Mchuchuma and Liganga are expected to produce up to three million metric tonnes each of coal and iron respectively every year. A feasibility study for the project was completed in 2006 but the project lacked

funding until China came along.

Dar es Salaam-IsakaKigali and Keza-GitegaMusongati This $1-billion modern railway line will link the port of Dar es Salaam to landlocked Rwanda and Burundi. A feasibility study by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) was concluded in 2009 for the upgrading of the 970-km Dar

es Salaam-Isaka section. An earlier study by Deutsche Eisenbahn Consulting GmBH for the construction of an extension of 494-km IsakaKigali stretch and the 197-km Keza-Musongati (Burundi) stretch said the project is economically viable. Last June Tanzania and Kigali agreed to fast-track the project through allocating of funds from their national budgets for its implementation.

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RR to commission the project in November.

Kibaki told a regional Heads of State meeting in Nairobi in September: “The economic and transport corridor will open up vast parts of Kenya and stimulate economic and social development while the project will also create vital links with Ethiopia and South Sudan, thereby increasing trade and investment in our region.”

Both China and Germany have expressed interest in financing LAPPSET. Initial projections by Kenya point at 2020 as the date for completion of the rail link which will have capacity to handle at least 30 daily trains to Juba and 50 to Addis Ababa.

Chinese firm JS Neoplant Company Ltd of Shangai is one of the companies that have expressed interest in financing and constructing the entire LAPPSET project. The company’s managing director Charles Kim was quoted by Kenya daily newspaper Nation in early October as saying JS Neoplant is interested in constructing the port, an airport, a railway line, a road network, an oil refinery and a pipeline.

China’s interest in this project is significant. Several stateowned Chinese oil companies are currently engaged in exploration and production of oil and gas in both South Sudan and Sudan. They produce over 90% of the 480,000 barrels of oil generated daily from both countries. But South Sudan, which accounts for 75% of the total oil, is landlocked.

This is after the residents voted overwhelmingly for independence from Sudan (Khartoum) in July. Both countries are now engaged in talks on the sharing of an oil pipeline linking South Sudan to Port Sudan, the only outlet linking the entire Sudan to the outside world. Khartoum authorities are demanding for $32 for every barrel of oil transported through the pipeline to the port. The South has offered between $5 to $10 for each barrel. This had led to a deadlock on the negotiations brokered by the African Union.

MOMBASA TO KAMPALA The next most ambitious project is the $4.5-billion, 1,170-km, standard-gauge line that will link Mombasa to Uganda’s capital, Kampala, through the Northern Corridor. Approved for construction by both Kenya and Uganda, the new line will run alongside the old, narrow-gauge (1000mm) line, which is in dire need of upgrading. (The new line will actually be 1,400 km in total, as it branches off to link the Victoria Lake city of Kisumu with the border town of Malaba.)

“THE EXISTING METREGAUGE RAILWAY NETWORK IS GRAPPLING WITH CHALLENGES, INCLUDING OBSOLESCENCE” KRC’s chief executive officer Nduva Muli says development of this high capacity line, with a single-train capacity of 10,000 tonnes, will enhance cargo volumes from the port of Mombasa to at least four countries in East Africa. It will run between Mombasa and Malaba with a branch to Kisumu for onward connection to Kampala and Great Lakes region, Muli told a recent rail development conference in Dar es Salaam.

“The existing metre-gauge railway network is grappling with challenges, including obsolescence,” he said.

After Kenya and Uganda agreed on the new SGR link the two countries’ state-owned railway operators were mandated to identify consultants to undertake preliminary

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design of the new railway.

Passenger trains on the double line will cruise at 160 km/h while freight trains will move at 120 km/h according to technical specifications by KRC. With an axle load of 32.5 tonnes, this modern railway will not only save on energy but has been designed for easy conversion to electric traction, said Solomon Ouna, a consultant engineer at KRC during a recent rail sector forum in Mombasa.

A project implementation programme by KRC, which has been tentatively accepted by Uganda Railways, says detailed design and the procurement of a construction contractor should be completed by July 2012 to pave way for actual construction two months later.

A form of public-private partnership is being considered for the new SGR. Both governments are expected to fund the development of the link from their national budgets with support from their development partners. The new infrastructure will be owned, managed and maintained by the two governments, according to the project’s proposal. The governments will also be in charge of safety management and the collection of tariffs through a new economic railway regulator, to be established. Private firms will be invited to take charge of rolling stock and train operation.

Kenya’s finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta said in June the project is being fast-tracked and design works on the Kenyan side should be ready by November. Kenya hopes the new project will help bring down the cost of business in the region.

At least four countries in Eastern Africa rely solely on the port of Mombasa for their exports and imports.

“The purpose of this project is to reduce the ever increasing cost of transport within the region, facilitate faster and cheaper movement of freight and passengers and enhance competitiveness, while saving on our newly rehabilitated road network,” the minister said. “It now costs about $1,000 (Ksh100,000) to transport a 20-foot container from Mombasa to Nairobi and it takes a whole day but the same container would cost about $400 (Ksh40,000) and be delivered in just about four hours by a modern railway transport.”

The minister said: “I now expect the Kenya Railways to proceed to conclude the design study by end of November 2011 to provide us with the estimated cost, routing and implementation arrangements.”

FIXING WHAT’S THERE The old narrow gauge, 2,352-km line from Mombasa to Kampala is also set for rehabilitation to improve its passenger and cargo volume capacity, currently estimated at less than 5% of the total tonnage handled at the port of Mombasa. The concessionaire operating the old line, Rift Valley Railways (RVR), a consortium led by Egypt’s private equity firm Citadel Capital, has unveiled an ambitious five-year programme to modernise the 100-year-old line.

The $280-million capital expenditure plan includes safety issues, track maintenance and the rehabilitation of locomotives and wagons. A consortium of six lenders and a regional bank lent RVR $164 million in August for the work.

The financiers include African Development Bank ($40 million), International Finance Corporation, IFC, ($22 million), Germany’s KfW Bankengruppe ($32 million), Dutch Development Bank, FMO ($20 million), and the Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries, BIO, ($10 million), ICF Debt Pool LLP ($20 million) and Kenyan Equity Bank ($20 million).

RVR has also unveiled another ambitious plan for a new rail link between Tororo in Uganda and Juba in South Sudan. The

Kenya Railways Corporation CEO Nduva Muli says the brand new Mombasa-Kampala line will enhance cargo volumes from the port of Mombasa to at least four countries in East Africa

Tanzanian vice president Mohammed Bilal, relieved at the long awaited deal to link mines in Mchuchuma and Liganga to the coast

Kenya’s finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta said in June the MombasaKampala line is being fasttracked

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“IT NOW COSTS ABOUT $1,000 TO TRANSPORT A CONTAINER FROM MOMBASA TO NAIROBI AND IT TAKES A WHOLE DAY BUT THE SAME CONTAINER WOULD COST ABOUT $400 AND BE DELIVERED IN ABOUT FOUR HOURS”

600-km-long line has been timed to take advantage of emerging business opportunities after the independence of South Sudan last July.

TANZANIA ON THE MOVE In Tanzania the government is planning a new, billion-dollar rail link from the port of Dar es Salaam to landlocked Rwanda and Burundi. This includes upgrading the 970-km Dar es Salaam-Isaka section and then building a new, 494-km line from Isaka to Kigali, Rwanda. An additional, 197-km stretch from Keza to Musongati, Burundi, seeks to exploit nickel deposits in Burundi and Tanzania.

Last year Tanzania and Rwanda completed a feasibility study for the Isaka-Kigali-Musongati project, and agreed to fast-track it with funds from their national budgets. Both countries say they will provide an implementation programme for the project after funding negotiations are finalised.

Funding is sought from, among other lenders, the African Development Bank.

Moving further south, in September Tanzania signed a $3billion deal with China for the development of coal and iron ore projects in Mchuchuma and Liganga respectively. Coal is expected to boost the country’s power generation. The new, $1-billion railway will transport the coal and ore to the ports of Mtwara and Dar es Salaam. A feasibility study for the 850km project has been concluded by Tanzania’s National Development Corporation (NDC) and the ministry of transport is expected to announce timelines for its implementation before the end of the year.

China’s Sichuan Hongda Corporation Limited and the NDC announced a joint venture in September, Tanzania China International Mineral Resources Limited, to implement the railway project. The JV provides a 20% stake for NDC and an 80% stake for Sichuan Hongda. “This joint venture will implement the long standing Mchuchuma and Liganga projects which the public at large and many stakeholders in the country have been so eagerly waiting for and their delay overly being lamented,” said Mohammed Bilal, Tanzania’s vice president.

CHALLENGES Clearly, governments in the region feel the time for rail has come. Says Kenya Railway Corporation’s Solomon Ouna: “Railway transport is the fastest available land transport mode for long distance and bulk freight and passengers, especially when using standard gauge technology. Effective railway transport reduces the cost of doing business by an average of 40%.” He adds: “Railways are the only effective way Mombasa and Dar es Salaam can provide port services to the region.”

But major challenges await the planned rail projects, not least the question of how the different gauges of the new and old networks will be harmonised. The railway lines being

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developed in Eastern Africa would be linked to others in sub Saharan Africa. Most countries now have a narrow-gauge lines (1000mm or 1067mm). The new rail projects will be standard-gauge, 1435mm. Ensuring interconnectivity between the different gauges will be a challenge, though not insurmountable, Ouna maintains.

Environmental organisations have also expressed concern over the impact of the LAPSSET project on the environment and indigenous communities in Kenya’s coastal region.

“Locals have never been consulted, environmental impact assessment, if ever performed, surely must have pointed to the tremendous negative impact on one of the world’s most vital ecosystems to mainlining the health of the oceans,” Mangrove Action Project (MAP), a global group fighting for the protection of mangroves said in a statement. According to MAP: “Dredging and cutting of the magnitude proposed would have untold impact on the dugong, one of the threatened species, and potentially ensure local extinction.” A dugong is a large marine mammal somewhat resembling a sea lion that feeds on sea grasses.

Rail masterplan consultant CPCS also raised a red flag on the environmental challenges facing some of the rail links, including Tanzania’s Liganga-Mchuchuma-Mtwara line, which runs through a game reserve.

More basic perhaps than the technical and environmental challenges is the question of whether sufficient political and management skill exists in the region to make the projects succeed or whether they will succumb to the torpor and mismanagement that has blighted such projects in the past, the most notable example being the Tazara Railway, or Freedom Railway. Funded by China and opened amid great fanfare in 1976 the Tazara Railway was supposed to bring dramatic economic benefits to Tanzania and Zambia, but it has been plagued by physical dilapidation and poor financial performance.

The signs are, however, that this time it will be different. Not only is the East African rail masterplan unprecedented in its size and scope, but governments are now divesting from key sectors, including transport, realising that state bureaucracy hinders performance and repels private investors. Even the old Kenya-Uganda railway has made huge strides since it was concessioned almost two years ago. The concessionaire has managed to mobilise funding for refurbishing the tracks and improving general rail services, something the two governments had not been able to do for years. A clear policy structure now exists for private equity to invest in infrastructure under build-own-operate-transfer models. The political will is there and so is the thirst to invest by private entities both local and foreign. China has led the way but now other investors are keen to follow.

Even the Tazara Railway’s fortunes appear to be turning.

Tanzania took the bold move of terminating its 25-year contract with concessionaire RITES in February last year and has announced a major re-organisation of the railway’s management with a view to courting new investors willing to revamp the network and operate it in a commercially viable way. Tazara management said last July that the line needs an investment of around $700 million to operate efficiently.

Time will tell of course but strong winds of change are definitely blowing through East Africa’s much-neglected rail sector. icon A journalist based in Nairobi, Shem Oirere writes about energy and construction. His articles have appeared in World Highways, Engineering News-Record, Windpower Monthly and International Railway Journal

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34 | THE VIEW FROM HERE MIDDLE EAST

STILL A GREAT PLACE TO BE In August 2011 Stephen Lines FCIOB was elected President of the CIOB Middle East region. Here he outlines the challenges and the opportunities facing the region in the next two years, and raises the key questions anyone thinking of relocating to the region should ask themselves

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ith over 35 years in the construction industry, nine of which have been in the Middle East, I am completely focused outside my day job as a senior contract manager with Turner & Townsend, in following through my election manifesto aims and raising the profile of the CIOB across the region. This will require a major team effort from the Regional Council and I am sure our success will benefit all members in, and those looking to relocate to, the MENA Region.

Here, along with the financial crisis, we have had to contend in some countries with uncertainty in the political and social structure, and civil unrest in countries like Bahrain, Egypt and Libya has affected the stability of the whole region with investors thinking twice before committing to major projects. In Dubai this is showing signs of having a reverse effect as, with a solid political structure, investors are coming back and looking at part-complete projects where a smaller investment could result in a higher net gain. This is based on a long term investment strategy as there is little likelihood of short term gains.

For those looking to work in the UAE you have to consider three main challenges: 1. Will the job or role have some certainty of duration?

Because, with the latest changes to visa requirements, unless you have a degree and an employer willing to cover the additional costs, you must stay with your employer for two years and failure to do so will result in a six-month ban; 2. Can I adapt to working in a multi ethnic environment with a predominately Muslim culture where some standard Western practices can be frowned upon and in some cases are illegal?

3. How quickly can I adapt to the frustrating bureaucracy, which makes simple tasks like getting a driving license a long and laborious process prone to sudden changes in legislation just when you think you have all your ducks in a row? A good example of this was the overnight requirement for the Emirates ID card for all government-based transactions.

“HOW QUICKLY CAN YOU ADAPT TO THE FRUSTRATING BUREAUCRACY, WHICH MAKES SIMPLE TASKS LIKE GETTING A DRIVING LICENSE A LONG AND LABORIOUS PROCESS?”

Looking at challenges across the Middle East the highest risk lies in choosing the right location as there is still likely to be unrest in countries not yet affected by political and social instability.

Many locations are putting major commercial projects on hold to concentrate on infrastructure, so there is great demand for civil engineers and professionals with experience on airports, hospitals and education projects. When countries

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such as Libya and Iraq settle down infrastructure professionals will be in great demand, as will those with experience in tough locations in procurement and contract management.

SIX CLEAR OBJECTIVES Turning to CIOB matters, with the branch office well established, a president elected and an interim regional council in place, we are now in a position to effectively promote our recognition and growth in the region. With institutions such as the British University in Dubai and Herriot Watt University in Dubai offering courses accredited by CIOB, and being close to reestablishment of an Abu Dhabi committee, the future is looking healthy but we have much work to do to establish centres in Oman and Qatar with Saudi Arabia and Bahrain hopefully close behind.

Considering the last two years in the Middle East, which have seen financial meltdown and civil unrest, I established six clear objectives for my two-year tenure as Regional President: ● Recognition of the CIOB as a standard bearer for quality with acceptance of its Members by recruiters, governments and the private sector as leaders in the construction industry; ● Recognition of MCIOB as a benchmark qualification for construction professionals throughout the region by recruiters, governments and private sector employers; ● Guarantee the global CIOB strategies are developed in the region ensuring membership growth and development is accessible to both corporate and incorporate members; ● Improve availability of CPD across the region and develop relationships with other institutes; ● Increase the number of accredited universities and institutes across the region; ● Continue the work already done at Members Forum allowing better interaction across the global CIOB community.

What does all this mean for those looking at the Middle East for a potential career move? Firstly, once you have considered all the challenges and decided to relocate, you can be sure the CIOB is in a position to support your continued professional development throughout the region.

With long established Review Boards and a full time office and staff in Dubai we already have a solid foundation.

Secondly working in the Middle East will certainly broaden your knowledge and experience through having to learn new skills working on some of the world’s iconic mega projects.

Depending on location you will probably find large cultural differences both in your professional and your social life, which is sure to be a broadening experience.

This is my third “Tour of Duty” in the Middle East, through both good and bad times, and neither I nor my family would be anywhere else! icon 04 QUARTER 2011

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