Yas Hotel wins MEP project of the year

Mick Cairns, Red Engineering

The Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi, developed by Aldar Properties PJSC, was declared the ‘Best Overall MEP Project of the Year’ at the 2009 MEP Awards held at Grosvenor House. Red Engineering was commissioned to supply the design for all MEP engineering works.

“This is a very impressive landmark building, and the achievement of this accolade has in no small way been as a result of the contribution made by the building services engineering. The external lighting on the roof brings the building to life and gives form to the external fabric. This achievement is even more remarkable when the very short design period is taken into consideration,” commented the judges.

The 500-room, 85 000 m2 complex opened in October 2009 to coincide with the Formula 1 Etihad Airways Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The Yas Hotel is one of the main architectural features of the ambitious US$36 billion Yas Marina development and accompanying Formula 1 raceway circuit.

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The brief was to design unobtrusive MEP systems that would meet the expectations of VIP customer, be sympathetic to the life expectancy of the building without effecting future operation (i.e. fully replaceable), and facilitate construction at high speed.

To achieve these ambitious objectives, Red Engineering worked closely with all team members, including the main and specialist contractors, to identify innovative design solutions, producing some 1 300 drawings in just 12 weeks. This short timeframe required high levels of collaboration between the architectural, structural and services disciplines to enable the absolute deadline to be met without sacrificing quality.

Adopting an approach of continued involvement by the original Red Engineering designers has allowed client change to occur on a project constructed in about 18 months. Red Engineering also maintained a team of 15 site-based personnel, whose mandate was to oversee the design development and installation quality.

Red Engineering recognised there was an opportunity to save valuable construction time through the effective use of prefabrication. One example of this was the re-planning of the bathrooms and associated service risers, which enabled prefabricated services to be installed. These were connected to prefabricated bathroom pods, with the result being that many weeks were saved in construction time. Having the guest rooms on the critical path did not mean that occupant comfort would be compromised in favour of time.

Of architectural and engineering significance is the main feature of the project’s design, a 217 m expanse of sweeping, curvilinear forms constructed of steel and 5 800 pivoting diamond-shaped glass panels. This grid shell component affords the building an architecture comprised of an atmospheric-like veil that contains two hotel towers and a link bridge constructed as a monocoque sculpted steel object passing above the Formula 1 track that makes its way through the building complex. The grid shell visually connects and fuses the entire complex together.