Week 2: Day 2

Site Visit to Fareed Tower

For this morning's site visit, Team 1 visited the Fareed Tower, and Team 2 visited the Jumeirah Village Residential Building. The Fareed Tower is to be completed in 2016, and house 19 full floor luxurious apartments.  At the Fareed Tower site, Team 1 was greeted by Project Director Mr. T.R. Subrahmanyam who began the site tour with a five minute briefing of the structure. After the meeting, the students traveled up to the highest completed floor (8th) to observe the column erection process and examine the precast floor slab installation.

Traveling down to the lower floors, the students had the opportunity to lay a concrete block wall. With some basic training from the onsite laborers, the students were instructed on how to spread the mortar and how to level the block after installation. Some attempts to lay the block wall were successful while others were in need of some alterations.

Students laying the lightweight concrete block.

On the first floor, the students were able to observe what one of the finished room doors will look like. The extensive height of the door and high ceilings put in perspective the luxuries that this apartment will have. In further discussion, the students learned that this door will be the entrance to the mock up room; this room will be completed and fully furnished prior to the rest in order to ensure client satisfaction with the layout.

Finally in the basement (which has three levels), the students were shown where the residents will park their cars. In this particular case, this residence does not have a ramp entrance to the parking garage; instead it has two car elevators which will transport cars from the road to the appropriate level of the parking garage.

At the closing of the visit, the students were given a quick quiz on shear and bending moment diagrams. Most students completed the quiz in less than a few minutes.

Back at the office in the afternoon, the students had two presentations dealing with Construction Management Finance and Construction Insurance. Mr. Wissam Otaky gave the presentation on finance, and the COO of Alpha Llyods Insurance Brokers LLC gave the presentation on Insurance. 

Alpha Llyods representative Mr. Ibrahim Karam presenting on Construction Insurance.