Dubai is spreading relentlessly into the arid desert region. The terrain is being developed through micro-tunneling projects that insert pipes in the dry earth – a 120-ton telescopic crawler crane from SENNEBOGEN lifts all of the equipment into the bore shafts.

Hosting Expo 2020 will bring new impetus to Dubai. Expo will give rise to a completely new nucleus for technology and companies, which will help to advance diversification in Dubai in the Emirates, where achieving independence from oil remains an important long-term goal. The growth of Dubai continues unabated. Dubai, with a good 3.1 million inhabitants, is the most populous of the Arab Emirates, not to mention the 15 million tourist visitors that come each year. The city is growing constantly and so the need to develop new building plots remains high.

Expansion in the desert: development with the micro-tunneling technique

Trenchless pipe-laying to reroute pipelines is a special process for developing terrain. This process is being used to press 14 km of water pipes, sewage pipes and other supply pipes into the ground in the Khawaneej area of Dubai, east of the international airport. This means that the starting shaft, in particular, needs to be firmly secured in loose, sandy ground.

The Dubai authorities require the contractors working on this public contract to use reliable and robust equipment, in order to make sure and steady progress on schedule, in spite of difficult soil conditions and temperatures of over 50 °C.

The equipment, in particular the drill head and the pipe-jacking machine, weigh up to 30 tons and need to be lifted safely into the starting shaft. The contractor, the National Plant company of Al Naboodah Group Enterprises L.L.C., chose a SENNEBOGEN telescopic crawler crane 6113 E with a lift capacity of 120 tons for the job.

After taking care of the drilling equipment, the telescopic crawler crane is also used to lift the pipe sections into the shaft and to remove the excavated material.

Construction site foreman Mr. Srinivas Badala is full of praise for the machine’s stability and flexibility of service. “We are lifting constantly changing loads with different boom lengths. The machine is very flexible when it comes to adjusting – we can lift varying loads in a very short space of time, which really speeds up progress on site.” And speed is what is required. The project must be finished by 2020 and the crane will move on to be used at another construction site, of which there are many in Dubai.