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Otis Elevators plans to leverage its experience working on the Burj Khalifa when it comes to bidding on the contract for the Kingdom Tower, the president for the South Asia Pacifica and Gulf Area said.
Having won a number of contracts in Saudi Arabia in recent years, Pierre Dejoux said that it would ‘definitely’ be bidding for the Kingdom Tower contract when the tender was released.
“For sure, we’re interested. We’ve got the experience of the Burj Khalifa and it’s the same architect, so for sure we’ll leverage on this experience for the Kingdom Tower. It’s important to have this experience to be in a position to get these iconic projects,” he told MEP Middle East.
“But, we’re still in the early stages, it’s too early to speak, but for sure, we’re interested in the Kingdom Tower.”
Otis expects to see about $200m generated from the Middle East in 2011, with $100m of that coming from Saudi Arabia alone.
However, he added that having overcome the challenges posed by the Burj Khalifa, and having set new records during its construction, he expected Otis to have an advantage when the time came to bid on the tender.
“Otis has 80% of the tallest buildings in the world. Before the Burj Khalifa, we have done the Shanghai Financial Centre and the Petronas Tower in Malaysia. Recently, we got the tallest tower in Seoul, it’s about 555m,” Dejoux said.
“Every time (we get a new project) we design specific elevators. We’ve got specific know-how and we’ve got high-rise speciality. So every time, this is a challenge.”
“In the Burj Khalifa, we’ve done unique elevators, we’ve broken records. We’ve got the fastest super double-decker doing 10m/s, travelling up to the observatory desk. For that we designed a special elevator specifically for the Burj Khalifa,” he added.
