AREVOLUTIONARY streamlined building system that offers the ability to build houses faster and cheaper while maintaining quality of construction is to be put to the test in Bahrain.

Contracting veteran Al Kobaisi Group will use its patented Al Kobaisi building system – which automates much of the construction process while using traditional materials such as cement and concrete blocks – to build 150 houses for Bahrainis in various parts of the kingdom.
Construction of the homes – which form part of housing projects across Sanad, Muharraq and Hamad Town – is poised to start shortly and the entire project is expected to be complete by the end of next year with the homes ready for handover in early 2012.
“An increasing number of citizens are finding it difficult to own their own homes, because of the rising costs of land as well as the difficulty in getting housing loans,” says managing director Abdulla Essa Al Kobaisi. “With this new system we hope to alleviate this problem in Bahrain.”

Troubles with tradition
While concrete is by far the best building material for construction, Al Kobaisi says that his extensive experience has also shown him that traditional methods can take time, are costly and hard to monitor for quality.
“Traditional concrete construction – in the form of in-situ poured concrete and concrete blocks – is the best method but over the years I have been on a mission to bring down costs and minimise the time taken in construction,” he says. “Also, quality control can be difficult on site when faced with extreme temperatures, the varying skills of the workers and various construction techniques adopted on site.”
He continues: “Transportation eats up 10 per cent of the total cost, with bags of cement, blocks, readymix concrete, window and door frames and labourers all having to be ferried to the site throughout the construction period. Plus, there is wastage of concrete, which gets spilled when bricks are mortared into place and the associated costs of the formwork and shuttering.”
Al Kobaisi decided to collaborate with German equipment manufacturer Nuspl to come up with an innovative solution that addresses these problems. The technique, patented by Nuspl in 2008, forms the basis of the Al Kobaisi system.
Al Kobaisi is now building a new facility to produce the building systems in Hidd Industrial Estate over an area of 11,000 sq m.
At the factory, homes will be built using blocks and cement in the traditional way, but using machines, thus ensuring superior quality of construction.
“While on site walls are constructed vertically, at the factory they will be built on a horizontal bed, where blocks and reinforcement are placed and cemented, which ensures cement is distributed evenly. The wall is then placed in a special furnace for drying, thus not exposed to weather conditions. The windows and doors are then installed on another production line.”
At the new facility, Al Kobaisi’s satellite factories for blocks, readymix concrete, glass and aluminium windows – will feed the main building system production line via conveyor belts.
By keeping the workforce and time taken on a project down by as much as 80 per cent, the automated system will slash the cost of building a home by as much as 40 per cent compared to traditional methods while maintaining quality of construction,” he adds.

On the fast track
Under the technique, key building components – footings, wall panels and roofs – will be manufactured on a production line, drastically reducing the time taken to transport various materials to the site.
“We can build a house in one week and 60 houses in a month,” Al Kobaisi says, adding that his company is the first in the kingdom to pioneer a fully-automated building system that keeps the number of workers on site to a minimum.
Kobaisi says the state-of-the-art building system will boost the economy and will benefit all stakeholders, including investors, the government and citizens. It will reduce the cost incurred in hiring expatriate labour by 80 per cent while opening new work opportunities for Bahrainis, he says.
The planned 150 houses for low- and middle-income groups will cover a total area of 150,000 sq ft. They include 38 two-storey villas, which will consist of four to five bedrooms, a hall, kitchen, bathrooms and other facilities.
The villas will be built in traditional Bahraini style, fully fitted with flooring tiles and quality ceramic, with room for further expansion.
The Al Kobaisi Group has been building houses in Bahrain since 1973 and its recent major projects include 30 homes in Hidd, 84 in Arad, and 20 in Busaiteen.
Al Kobaisi says that soaring land prices remain a challenge for both investors and homeowners, accounting for 50 to 70 per cent of the total cost of building of a house.
Faced with exorbitant land prices and a credit squeeze investors are cutting down on the size and scale of their homes while compromising on quality by using low-grade materials, he points out.
Thus, this new solution will go a long way alleviating Bahrain’s housing crisis, Al Kobaisi concludes.
Established in 1972, the Al Kobaisi Group is headquartered in the Sitra industrial area and has many divisions that cater to the construction sector, including Al Kobaisi Aluminium and Glass, Al Kobaisi Readymix, Al Kobaisi Precast Factory, Al Kobaisi Block Factory, Al Kobaisi Construction and Maintenance, Al Kobaisi Sand and Aggregate, Al Kobaisi Electrical Contracting, Al Kobaisi Building System, and Al Kobaisi Security Services.
Al Kobaisi has recently launched production of double-glazed units, aluminium and glass accessories as well as special concrete mixes and is now eyeing the manufacture of ceramic and porcelain tiles.
Al Kobaisi Readymix has an annual production capacity of 1.2 million cu m, Al Kobaisi Block Factory a capacity of 30 million of various pieces a year, and Al Kobaisi Precast a capacity of 540,000 sq m of hollowcore slabs and 900,000 sq m of building/housing components a year.