In one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken in the Middle East, the construction of the platform of the New Doha International Airport (NDIA) is on schedule, thanks to the vital groundwork laid by the reclamation joint venture under the leadership of Qatar Dredging Company (QDC).

The new airport in Qatar is currently under construction on reclaimed land, 4 km east from the existing airport. As part of the first phase, a platform of 22 sq km is to be constructed – half of which is reclaimed from the sea – requiring in total a massive movement of 62 million cu m of rock and sand.
The execution time for this enormous reclamation project is 24 months, with a completion date set at December 1, 2006.
The QR1.559 billion platform reclamation contract is being executed by a consortium led by QDC. Other partners are Dredging International (Belgium), Great Lakes Dredging & Dock Company (US), and Boskalis Westminster Middle East (the Netherlands).
In order to allow large, high-capacity vessels to approach the project site, the project necessitated a 6 km access channel to be cut by QDC’s Al Mahaar, which is among the 10 most powerful rock cutter dredgers in the world.
Since then, an extensive fleet of vessels has been deployed to create and deepen this channel. The capacity of the fleet was increased to 11 dredgers: four heavy-duty rock-cutter dredgers and a number of medium-size hopper dredgers and four booster stations at a time have been deployed to widen and deepen the channel over the full length to the required depth of -13.9m.
Four jumbo-size hopper dredgers have been positioned at the project. After dredging sand at offshore areas up to 40 km out at sea, they transport a cargo of between 13,000 cu m to 15,000 cu m of sand for a single load (the equivalent of some 750 trucks).
The jumbo dredgers are connected to a pipeline system which discharges the sand onto the platform at the designated phasing section, the east runway.
Al Mahaar has now been deployed in the “rehandling basin” with two to three hopper dredgers dumping in front of it – and the combined progress of the reclamation has been stepped up to an impressive rate of 130,000 cu m per day or 4 million cu m per month.
On the first area handed over, the piling works to create a firm foundation for both a passenger terminal and concourse building are now under way.