Projects, contracts, tenders

Stuart Matthews.

The industry just can’t hear these words enough, because they mark the start of real work.

Projects, contracts and tenders are my three favourite construction words. Those of you who I’ve met may wince at the sound of them. If we were in a meeting, I will certainly have said them to you more than once.

But there’s a reason for my belligerence on the subject. Information about projects, contracts and tenders is what Construction Week’s readers have proved they want time and time again. As I write, a story headlined Besix and Takreer win contracts in Abu Dhabi tops the ‘most popular’ list on constructionweekonline.com.

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On any given day, stories that reference projects, contracts and tenders will out do just about any of our many other online offerings, except perhaps for the occasional top 10. There’s no doubt that they are the three things that matter most to our readers; we and them just can’t get enough.

With this in mind, we’ve made changes to Construction Week, relaunching this issue to greater reflect the three words that sum up what the industry is most keen to know more about.

Our changes also reflect the evolving industry and the reach our daily news website has achieved. With more than 100,000 people – the vast majority from the GCC – using constructionweekonline.com as their source of daily regional construction news, the focus of the magazine has shifted to more analysis, more features and a greater depth of project and
site coverage.

We will continue to address issues that directly affect our readers, as well as look at those that have an influence on the broader industry. A greater emphasis on the business of construction is one of the results, with the addition of a weekly financial summary to bring you a glimpse of the week’s biggest financial winners and losers.

This shift can also be seen in our lead interview with Mohammed Alabbar, who heads up arguably the region’s most successful property developer and who has, in effect, been the ultimate source of more construction contracts than just about anyone else.

As issues go, sustainability is always worth talking about. The biggest problem is that so few companies actually do anything other than talk. Recently though, there has been a very practical and real-world change in construction sustainability in the emirate of Abu Dhabi.

The newly-operational recycling plant for construction waste, located in Al Dhafra, is proof positive that sustainable construction can be a real thing and not just confined to a developer’s brochure (see page 34). The plant has been developed to turn waste concrete into aggregate, to build the emirate’s roads. Regulations to encourage the use of the plant and its product are expected to follow shortly.

Visiting the site of the plant, which is a bit like a quarry where the raw materials are delivered by the truck load, was a chance to see practical recycling in action. It’s a dusty, industrial process that has a useful output and will help the emirate improve its environmental standing.

It seems likely then that you can expect to be driving on recycled roads in the coming years. If in the meantime you have news about projects, contracts or tenders, just drop us a line.