The show must go on

The exterior of Al Raha Beach Theatre. The landmark is situated on the waterfront of the Al Raha Beach in Abu Dhabi.

Constructed in less than a year at a cost of $23m the Al Raha Beach theatre is located on the waterfront. With a capacity of 2100, it is one of the sites of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage.

Khidmah was recently awarded a contract through Musanada for 17 sites of ADACH including the cultural landmark theatre. And FM service delivery was expected to be as speedy as its construction.

“One of the reasons Musanada selected Khidmah was the fact that we needed to demonstrate change immediately for their client. We set ourselves a target of 60 days in which to complete the annual maintenance, identifying both latent and patent defects,” said Khidmah services supervisor, Abdulla Al Amri.

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“Some of these buildings are over 20 years old and required immediate attention. Prior to Musanada, the reactive maintenance was much higher than preventative and predictive.”

Khidmah arranged weekly mobilisation sessions between ADACH, Musanada and itself. Many clients would not allow this in a tripartite arrangement but Musanada wanted to promote open dialogue between all three parties from the outset in a formal and informal manner.

A process of deep cleaning, civil work and annual MEP maintenance work ensued and the priority then became to shift the 80:20 reactive:preventative balance to 20:80 reactive:preventative maintenance.

Musanada encouraged Khidmah to work towards this target and regular reports were analysed by the engineers to ensure the reactive works reflected this progress.

“It took approximately three months to work through the challenges, said Ahmad Mansour FM for Khidmah.

“We had to have the team ready set up. They knew the place, had their tools, and a minimum number of spare parts ready because you didn’t have time to go back and get things. Repair work on all the defects began, after which we looked at preventative FM.”

There is a dedicated MEP team on site consisting of a mechanical supervisor, electrical engineer, two electrical supervisors and technicians. The electrical bias is due to the volume of electrical works on site.

For the theatre project Khidmah works closely with its Musanada counterparts. For example, the Khidmah team works on the lighting system, fixing minor electrical issues but a specialist engineer is assigned on Musanada’s part for major works and the stage lighting. Specialist contractors are also employed for lifts and fire systems.