AED3bn Mirdif City Centre opens on time

Gerhard Hope , March 17th, 2010

The AED3 billion, 196,000 square metre Mirdif City Centre has been delivered on-time, and with 85% of its 430 retail outlets opening on the same day.

The on-time completion of the massive project in is a major achievement for the region’s construction industry, said Majid Al Futtaim Properties CEO Peter Walichnowski at the official opening

“It is one of the most successful openings of any mall in the region. Once we started construction two years ago, we promised to open on 16 March 2010, and so here it is,” said Walichnowski.

“We have saved 20% of the total energy consumption through design initiatives embedded in the scheme. We have selected materials with a high recyclable content, sourced from sustainable sources, and have championed a market-leading 50% of the construction waste not going to landfill. This is a remarkable achievement, shifting the benchmark in the region up significantly,” said Majid Al Futtaim Properties vice-president, project management, Jonathan Emery.

“It is a fresh look, and a new addition to the landscape of retail environments in Dubai,” said Emery, commending RTKL Architects and principal builder ALEC for their achievements.

The project manager was Mace, EC Harris was the cost consultant, Mott Macdonald the structural engineer and WSP the MEP consultant. A total of 16,000 employment opportunities were generated during the construction phase, with 5000 permanent jobs generated by the shopping centre itself.

“There are many challenges you face when trying to construct 196,000 square metres in such a short space of time to such a high quality, and endeavour – and, in this case, succeed – to get so much of it open on the first day.

“One of the challenges we had not anticipated as we started construction was the pressures we faced as we started to build into a gathering storm of such a massive construction boom, and the significant inflation in commodity prices. That was followed very shortly afterwards by the backdraft of a deflating market, and the difficult, different challenges that brought to the project. But we managed to work through all these,” said Emery.

“One of the challenges we set ourselves was to become an environmentally-friendly mall. We set our sights on LEED Gold, and that is a really high hurdle. It is the first time in the region, and it is a significant recognition of the design implications that have been put into building this mall.”

Next: Project management and energy saving measures.

Commenting on the project management challenges faced by the project, Emery said the procurement strategy “was based around a high prioritisation of time and quality. Those were the two principle drivers.

"Obviously, cost is always important, but we wanted this to be delivered at pace. We took the step to procure this with one main builder and a single-stage procurement process. Essentially the design went out and the price was received, which enabled us to parallel-track design and construction.”

Emery said this process entailed some risk, as “a relatively small quantity amounted to contractual certainty. Provisional sums were budgeted, and when certain aspects were designed in detail, these were then openly and transparently procured with the builder, and obviously it was hoped the pricing would align with the budgets we had provided for initially.”

Emery said the environmental aspects were added to the design “relatively late. Essentially we decided to do that about two years ago, just about when we started construction. We made a conscious decision that we did not want to be the last dinosaur, but the first of a new breed. We saw the opportunity, did the assessment and decided to invest the money in adapting the design accordingly."

Commenting on the attention to general infrastructure in the area, such as ensuring proper road access, Emery said: “My experience is that mature, experienced developers know what matters, what the key success criteria are for a mall – and transportation and accessibility are pretty high up. These are mundane and are not the pretty bits, but if you get your transportation wrong, it becomes a major issue.”

Mirdif City Centre is Majid Al Futtaim Properties’ tenth mall in the MENA region and its third in Dubai. “Looking forward, we have plans to build another ten malls across the MENA region over the nest five to ten years. We aim to replicate the success we have had in Dubai in the rest of the region,” said Walichnowski.