Client: Emaar and Meraa

Location: Burj Khalifa, Dubai

Contract:

Size: 36 million sq. ft.

Value:

The Dubai Hills Estate will be an ultra-luxurious neighborhood 3 km from the Burj Khalifa, set around an 18-hole championship golf course. The project spans 36 million sq. ft. and has its own rail line connecting the emirate’s two international airports, highly competitive schools, and world-class healthcare facilities. It features vast stretches of landscaped parks, lush gardens, and winding walkways that encourage outdoor exploration and guide residents to the estate’s high-end retail clusters and exclusive hotels.

Dubai Hills is being delivered in a joint venture between Emaar Properties and Meraas Holding, two of the area’s most prominent real estate developers. The Middle East is an emerging market and some of the world’s most challenging construction work takes place here. The project is high-profile and, amid a crowded field of renowned international competition, Emaar and Meraas chose EllisDon to lead this ambitious project to success. When EllisDon leverages the full strength of who we are and all we do, we match up favorably against the biggest and best our global industry has to offer.

Firstly, we offer a results-oriented vs process-driven method of working. In the Middle East, the image of Project Management Consultants has been damaged. Consultants began focusing on processes and procedures over results and this was hurting their clients; an important project management function is to provide a structure within a project team but managers have made a habit of sacrificing progress for policy. EllisDon only implements essential project systems and the majority of our focus is on the execution of works: we ensure design and construction services are delivered efficiently.

Secondly, we offer Cradle to Grave vs Construction Only. Our client understood we have the experience and expertise to take a project from inception to close. At the moment, they’re asking for project management, but they appreciate that EllisDon is so much more than just the team assigned to their project and, given our comprehensive capabilities, now see us as an invaluable partner. For example, when bidding, we sold our expertise around BIM and how it will help the project team deliver. Our VDC division developed a preliminary 4D model that showed our client exactly how we plan to sequence the delivery of the project and organize the project’s logistics. This gave the client concrete experience with one of our cradle-to-grave services and validated everything we say about being an end-to-end construction and building services company.