One can imagine that WA engineer Peter de Bruin felt on top of the world when he stood at the 80th floor of the towering Dubai skyscraper known as the Index.
The 328m tower was just one of 50 Dubai skyscrapers which Mr de Bruin and his employer BG&E have worked on since 1997; the smallest of which was on par with Perth’s 250m Central Park tower.
During his nine years at BG&E’s Dubai office, he experienced a time in history that most structural engineers could only ever dream about — the biggest building boom the world has seen.
“We were literally living and working in a city that was being built around us,” he said. “It felt like you were living on a construction site because there were roads and buildings going up all around you.”
BG&E is an Australian engineering company that was started in WA in 1970 by engineers Peter Bruechle, Norm Gilchrist and Ernie Evans. It quickly made its mark on public projects in Perth, before expanding with an office in Sydney.
In 1997, BG&E assisted Brookfield Multiplex to expand its interests beyond Australia by helping Brookfield Multiplex come up with an alternative design for a contract for the Emirates Tower.
After a successful result for the joint venture partners, it went on to set up in Dubai, opening its office in 2003, which was the same year the building boom hit the Middle East city.
It has since moved many Australian staff to the Middle East, and supplemented the heavy workload by undertaking some of the engineering design and documentation for Middle East projects in its Australian offices.
It expanded its reach in the Middle East with an office in Abu Dhabi in 2008 and in Qatar in 2011, involving itself in the design of about 50 buildings that exceed 35 storeys, the most notable being Dubai’s the Index (80-storey, 328m designed by Sir Norman Foster) and the JW Marriot Marquis Dubai Hotel, a 72-storey, 355m twin-tower complex, which is the world’s tallest single-use hotel.
Mr de Bruin said the Australian company appeared to have a competitive advantage because local engineers were accustomed to working with contractors on design-and-construct contracts, which was the method used in Dubai.
“Many engineering companies from other parts of the world were accustomed to design-only contracts, in which the designs for the structural framework of a building were completed without the input from the constructor,” he said.
However, the Australian engineers did face many challenges as they learnt to operate in a different environment, including a requirement that Australian engineers learn a new set of building codes and working with local authorities to get design approval.
The sheer height of the skyscrapers also brought with it a new set of dynamics for the structural engineers.
“The buildings must be able to support their weight, applied loads, resist wind and earthquakes while ensuring that a balance is achieved between cost, engineering, and construction methodology,” he said.
Article written by: Kim McDonald
Article written for the 2015 Australian Engineering Week lift-out featured in The West Australian on 3 August 2015. View the lift-out here.