About 15 million cu m of land has been excavated and reclaimed to create the The Pearl-Qatar, a man-made island 350 offshore and 30 km from the capital Doha. The site was chosen because just below the surface is a large rock embankment.

The shape of the Pearl was designed to make the most of this natural shelf and in terms of reclamation projects, relatively little material was needed to raise the Pearl out of the sea.
The developer, United Development Company (UDC), contracted the task of reclaiming the island to Qatar Dredging Company (QDC). Although only established in 2004, one of QDC’s major shareholders is Belgium’s Dredging and Environmental Marine Engineering (DEME), who is bringing its considerable expertise to this project.
The project was initially anticipated to be mainly a dredging project but the water was too shallow for a big dredger to operate widely and the subsurface rock too hard for a small dredger. In fact, the water depth was in certain areas as little as 1 m – and several parts of the perimeter of the island have to be deepened to create ‘blue water’ and allow small pleasure boats to enter the marinas. This ‘cut’ element produced 10 million cu m of the 15 million cu m needed. The remaining 5 million cu m was brought from an area 5 km away, where the big dredgers could operate. In addition, there were the quay block walls and armour rock protection that had to be imported onto the site and carefully placed.
For the reclamation activities, The Pearl Qatar operated the country’s largest fleet of construction equipment, 500 machines in total – including 35 dozers, 120 excavators, more than 100 articulated haulers and 25 wheel loaders. In total, they consumed over 150,000 litres of fuel a day. The reason for needing so many construction machines on this reclamation project (where normally a dredger would do most of the work) was that 80 per cent of the reclamation needs to be done dry.
To achieve this, a vast area of temporary dykes was created – and then 30 massive 3,000 cu m/hr dewatering pumps extracted the water to create a dry sea bed for the construction equipment to work from.
“Working dry has allowed us to create a higher finished quality, especially on the shore protection and quay walls,” believes Hedwig Vanlishout, the project’s experienced Belgian director of marine works. “It has also allowed us to cope better with the wide variation of surface we find on the site – from the hardest ro ck to the softest silt.”
The 660,000 sq m of soft silt was dried and compacted using 1.5 million land drains and sand surcharge – but the unstable cap rock proved more problematic. Several methods were used to break this up, from large marine hydro-hammers to drill and blasting, diamond cutters, dozer rippers and surface miners. While all had their merits, the most effective method was using a fleet of 50 excavators fitted with hydraulic breakers.
A fleet of over 100 articulated haulers was used to transport all the material around this complex site. The majority of these was from Volvo Construction Equipment, and included the A35D and A40Ds. Some were fitted with body liners to protect against damage from the hard rock, and others had ‘greedy boards’ to retain the sloppy silt from escaping.
“We pre-tested Caterpillar, Volvo and Bell,” says Vanlishout, “and finally opted for Volvo. But because we had to do more dry construction than we originally planned we ended up using twice the number of haulers we had expected.”
Despite 20-hour days, the harshness of the dusty climate – which can touch 50 deg C – and the working surface, which could be uneven and very wet, the haulers performed well.
“I thought we’d have trouble,” says Scottish construction manager Bruce Davidson, “but despite moving 750,000 cu m a week they kept plodding along.”
Most of the construction equipment is subcontracted but QDC took responsibility for the maintenance and repair of the equipment on the site.
“We managed the servicing of the machines as if they were all our own fleet,” says Vanlishout. “Due to the complexity of the project it would be very difficult to do it any other way.”
Local Volvo dealer Araco played an important part in maximizing machine uptime. “Spare parts are a crucial in keeping the fleet going,” says vice president Joseph Lahoud. “We have a rapid pipeline of components and consumables flowing from our regional parts warehouse in Dubai as well as our local operation in Doha.”
Upon completion of the island, the temporary dykes were removed, allowing the sea to creep back in and form one of the most beautiful man made islands in the world. The building contractors are already on site – and the last of the 40,000 residents is expected to arrive in 2009.