Construction and Infrastructure

Canary Wharf Group is to construct a new office building of over 500,000 square feet at Canary Wharf in London.     

Work on the substructure at 25 Churchill Place has already been completed, with construction of the 20-storey tower due to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

Canary Wharf Group has called the building of the tower “a symbolic milestone”, as it completes the development of the original Canary Wharf masterplan.

Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) has announced the signing of a contract to construct the country’s tallest building.

Construction of the Kingdom Tower, which will measure over 1,000 metres in height, will begin imminently in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the company said.

The building is set to be the centrepiece and the first construction phase of Kingdom City, Jeddah Economic Company’s new urban development of over 5.3 million square metres of land in North Jeddah, overlooking the Red Sea and Obhur Creek.

Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company and Canary Wharf Group have signed a deal with Shell International to redevelop the Shell Centre site on London’s South Bank.

The two companies have entered into a 50:50 joint venture, and will each contribute £150 million to secure the 5.25 acre site on a 999-year lease.

Canary Wharf Group will act as the construction manager for the project and will also be joint development manager with Qatari Diar.

Dutch construction and engineering company Ballast Nedam is to be part of a consortium that will build a new biomass power plant in the port of Delfzijl in the Netherlands later this year.

Ballast Nedam will join forces with Germany’s Areva Renewables and with Finland’s Metso Power to build the 49 megawatt plant, which will produce energy from recycled waste wood chips—enough to meet the needs of 120,000 households.

The plant will be located alongside the maritime channel at Delfzijl and will begin operations in the summer of 2013.

Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Saudi Aramco, has announced it is to form a joint venture to build and operate a chemicals complex in Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia.

The joint venture, Sadara Chemical Company, will be formed with the Dow Chemical Company of Michigan in the US to build what the companies have called a “world-scale, fully integrated chemicals complex”.

UK airport operator BAA will be required to sell Stansted Airport, followed by Edinburgh or Glasgow Airport, the Competition Commission (CC) confirmed today.

The decision upholds the CC’s earlier provisional view, which was published in March.

The CC had been considering whether there were any material changes in circumstances since it published its final report on BAA in March 2009 that should give it cause to reconsider the implementation of the airport sales.

The last few years have seen an unprecedented increase in new development in Abu Dhabi, matched by a dramatic rise in competition within the industry. Elie Saikali, GMO of Dhafir Development and Contracting, explains to Gay Sutton how the company’s management and operational principles have given it an edge in this challenging marketplace.

Based on 30 years of experience in India, Tata Projects Limited (TPL) is in growth mode as it takes on some of the country’s largest infrastructure projects, at the same time looking at the opportunities thrown up by the energy boom in the Middle East.

Jeff Daniels looks at yet another example of how South Africa is setting the pace of change.