Building Al Ain: Talal Al Salamani

Al Ain Municipality urban planning director Talal Al Salamani.
[More Images]

Plan Al Ain 2030, launched in April, will guide the development of the City for the next two decades, during which time the Urban Planning Council of Abu Dhabi expects the population to double. As the first construction contracts are rolled out over the next six months, Al Ain Municipality urban planning director Talal Al Salamani tells us how it will be.

What is the scope of Plan Al Ain 2030?

We are liaising closely with the Urban Planning Council (UPC) of Abu Dhabi, and in consultation with the UPC, we are going to run a number of projects.

The first plan is concerned with the city of Al Ain itself. The second is concerned with the urban planning framework incorporating all of the settlements, towns and villages within the Eastern Region of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (of which Al Ain City is the capital).

Story continues below

Advertisement

FEATURED COMMENT Please click here to comment on this article

There will also be projects that revolve around the ongoing improvement of the downtown area. The projects will deliver the full circle of services including transit, urban regeneration, and improvement of existing infrastructure.

Will you talk us through the early stages of the construction timetable?

The new residential area will involve the private sector. The developer will build the community houses and the infrastructure for the overall area.

The first step is the design of the prototype villas which will be approved by the client, in this case Al Ain Municipality. We will then start the construction of the infrastructure, and following that, the contracts to build the villas will be awarded by the developer, which is Aldar Properties.

To run some of these stages in parallel then becomes a project management exercise. We will start doing basic, or in some cases major, frame infrastructure and at the same time we will begin some of the basic villa construction like foundations and so on. By this stage the government will have allocated a budget to the developer for the construction of the villas.

So the villa construction is fully government funded?

Yes, the government will finance all of the construction work required to build the houses and the infrastructure. The villa prototypes will be delivered in a way that will suit the Emirati family size and the architectural style will be blended into the architecture of the city of Al Ain.

How will the funding be administered?

Instead of paying it straight to the developer it will be put in a fund and the developer will have access to that fund. There will be a system of supervising and releasing the payment according to the amount of work that is to be done.

Based on that approach the developers will get a contribution to the construction of the Emirati housing, which will be paid according to a fixed rate. This will be a measured works contract.

When will the first tenders be issued?

We hope that we can start things by the end of this year. We have appointed architects to design the villas and the consultants to work on the infrastructure. We actually started with one architect, but with the current downturn, more were invited to get different pricing.

We assumed that the design drawings and the approval required may take six months or so, along with preparing tender documents. We hope that construction will start sometime this year or early 2010.