Uneventful Is Not Easy

I would like to elaborate on your article “650-Plus Meters Skyward, Crews Are Already Out of This World,” which implies that describing a project as “un­eventful” is the same as saying the project is “easy”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

When trying to build the world's tallest building in such a harsh environment, the construction planning and or­ganizational challenges facing a contractor are immense. The skills required to manage day-to-day construction operations on over one hundred different floors are of the highest level. Additionally, construction technology must be so innovative as to be virtually beyond the state of the art. Almost every component surpasses the precedent of previous experience, from pumping concrete to un­precedented heights in desert heat to surveying a building so tall that traditional optical methods could not be used be­cause of the distance, dust and heat distortion of the air. The list goes on and on.

Behind all of this work is the goal of the contractor: to make the construction uneventful. It is not easy to make things go uneventfully. It means the contractor has done the very hard work it takes to plan and execute the project. One of the highest compliments given to a contractor is that the project was un­eventful.

On the Burj Dubai, I felt my job as the structural engineering designer was to help make the contractor’s job as un­eventful as possible. Long before the contractor was selected, my team of structural engineers and I were engaged in the difficult task of simplifying construction of this extraordinary project. This in­cluded standardizing the size of elements in order to maximize repetition and meeting with potential formwork suppliers to understand their concerns.

For example, for the outriggers that occur approximately every 30 floors, the thickness of the perimeter columns was made to match the thickness of adjacent co-planar core walls so that the formwork could be easily aligned. The setbacks of the tower were made on a structural module so that columns above would sit on a wall below in order to avoid transfers. Also, the geometry of the center hexagonal core walls remained practically the same from the lowest basement to the 156th floor, in order to standardize the construction and maximize the reuse and speed of the formwork systems. The spire was re-detailed to accommodate a creative erection methodology that the contractor proposed. All of this helps make the contractor’s work go smoothly and uneventfully.

The entire SOM design team of structural engineers, design architects, technical architects and MEO engineers worked very had to design a “Swiss watch” that could have a clean and repetitive structure. We knew this would be key to getting the building built. Making something simple is never easy.

In the not too distant future, I look forward to raising my glass with KJ Kim, who is leading the Samsung/BeSix/Arabtec construction team in Dubai, and Ahmad Abdelrazaq, who is leading the construction coordination with Samsung in Seoul, and toasting the successful conclusion of an incredible project that was very challenging, but “uneventful.”

William F. Baker
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Chicago