Dubai Pearl project tenders issued

"We signed the original contract in late 2008 as a gross maximum price (GMP) one. The total value was nearly Dh9bn -plus then and we were able to bring it down to Dh7.4bn, which is a good saving and has been passed on to our customers, Santhosh Joseph, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Pearl, told Emirates Business. The project is expected to be complete by end-2012 or beginning 2013.

"The MEP tender has been issued by the main contractor (Al Habtoor-Leighton) and scheduled to be finalised by September 16. The aluminium and glazing (façade) tender has been issued and the sub-contractor will be appointed by September 30," he said. The lifts and escalators tender has been issued by main contractor and the sub-contractor will be on board by October 15. "The project has already got the pre-Gold Leed rating and it took us some time to achieve it," he said. "We are in the middle of getting the Gold Certification." The economies of scale will work in favour of the developer who plans to work on multiple buildings at the same time. "We can aggressively do a floor a week but have decided against it and plan to take one-and-a-half to two weeks on a floor. The finishing will take time though we have sold many units as shell and core. So we can start delivering by late 2012 and hotels will take longer than that. We have shifted our programme but that suits our customers. We have also changed our components on the projects so that the residential component is 42 per cent, offices 24 per cent [earlier, both were equal], retail and others 15 per cent and the seven hotels comprise 19 per cent, due to the change in market conditions."