The great indoors

Akhrass: Decision to upgrade interiors was correct, despite it prolonging work.

When Depa won the contract to fit out a major portion of the interiors of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper, in 2006, the Dubai-based firm was under no illusion that the multimillion-dollar project would be one of its most challenging yet.

Depa, the world’s largest interior fitout contractor, regularly works on large scale projects such as luxury hotels, airports, cruise ships, malls and offices.

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But completing the Burj Khalifa at the same time as helping install the interiors for another of Dubai’s major projects, the Metro, was one of its toughest tests to date.

“We never expected it to be an easy project; after all, this is the world’s tallest tower and we always knew it would be a challenging project,” says Nadim Akhrass, managing director of operations for Depa.

“It’s been challenging since the first day but the bright side is that the world will soon be able to see the fruits of three years of very hard work.”

Many of the problems centred around the logistics of transporting thousands of tonnes of materials up to some of the tallest residential apartments in the world.

Then there was dealing with the sheer size of Depa’s labourforce. While the firm had 150 staff working in the office from the beginning of the project, during the peak of construction, which continued for more than a year and a half, the firm employed more than 2,400 labourers onsite.

“There was a logistical challenge working on the Burj Khalifa given its huge height. To move hundreds of workers up hundreds of floors to the final work location, to feed them, take care of their sanitary facilities and get them back to buses at the end of the day is a very challenging process,” admits Akhrass.

To overcome the time constraints, Depa ensured that all transportation of the materials, which included a staggering 8,000 tonnes of marble imported from Italy, 100,000 square metres of parquet flooring and 8,500 timber doors, was completed at night, using a dedicated lift. This move allowed labourers working the day shift to concentrate solely on the materials’ installation.

Depa won the ‘S06’ contract to fit out all of the building’s residential apartments in April 2006. As part of the mandate, the firm has completed the interiors of 900 apartments between floors 19 and 107 on the middle tiers, which are located above the Armani hotel and below the office space on the top section.