A touch of frost in Dubai

Operating from 10am till 12am, Ski Dubai requires a building management system to help ensure the smooth operation of the entire resort.

As you drive down Sheikh Zayed Road towards Abu Dhabi, you’ll notice a strangely shaped building rising out of the vast, sun-baked roof of the Mall of the Emirates.

Although it looks more like an alien spaceship that has crash landed in the mall’s parking lot, that silver coloured structure is actually home to one of the most remarkable feats of MEP engineering in the Middle East, if not the world.

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The star attraction of the Mall of the Emirates, one of the largest shopping malls in the world, Ski Dubai is a project of many contradictions. After all, who would expect a ski resort built in the heart of one of the more arid regions on the planet, it defies all logic, and it really shouldn’t exist. But exist it does, and since it’s opening in 2005, the project has been a beacon of Dubai’s burning ambition to turn the impossible into reality.

Developed as a leisure destination, the resort is home to a 200ft high indoor mountain that has enough snow to cover three football fields.

With five slopes of varying steepness and difficulty, including a 400m long run, the world’s first indoor back run and a 90 metre long quarter pipe for snowboarders, it’s easy to see why so much snow is required.

In addition, a 3,000m² snow park and cavern for the non-skiers adds further complications when it comes to maintaining the project’s estimated 10,000 tonnes of snow.

Part of the Majid Al Futtaim Group, the project was developed in 2005 by Majid Al Futtaim Properties and is maintained by in house by MAF Dalkia, the joint venture between the group and the Dalkia Group, a European leader in multi-technical services.

With 51% of the company owned by the MAF Group, and the remaining 49% by Dalkia, the facilities management company is one the most well known in the UAE. Its operations extend from retail and hospitality to aviation and industrial cooling.

As part of its remit for the project, the company is also required to handle Ski Dubai’s MEP operations.

However, no matter how extensive their experience was, nothing the company has done prepared it for the challenges of running a project as complex as the ski dome, as Arnaud Martinez, director of MAF Dalkia UAE, says.

“The biggest challenge was that this type of project was new in the Middle East. But it was a very interesting one to meet. The way to face these challenges is not to compare it with other similar projects, but to bring together different kinds of skills to be sure you can operate it,” he explains.

“As a concept, Ski Dubai is a leisure destination, but what you find is that all the chairlifts and equipments are like what you would find in a normal mountain resort in Europe. You have a cold area that is similar to a cold warehouse, like the ones you find everywhere in the world, where you stock food and other goods.”