Dubai: It will be almost another month before the first resident will be able to move into Burj Khalifa.
Officials have said that the developer will immediately take charge of the property from the various contractors and sub-developers.
The branded Armani Residences on levels 9 to 16 will open their doors first, to be followed by the much-awaited Armani Hotel Dubai, which occupies the concourse to Level 8 and Levels 38 and 39, which will open to guests in March.
While the new residents have yet to see the inside of the building, the workers who spent the past few years working in and around Burj Khalifa are amazed at the final results.
Abdul Gaffar, who toiled for six years on the tiling work on the Burj and the Lake Fountain, said: "In the beginning, I didn't think that it could turn out like this. Even later, I used to look up at the building with amazement, on how high the cranes would lift the construction materials and then bring things down," Abdul Gaffar said.
Happy about height
Harichandra, a foreman with Al Futtaim's construction company, worked on the pipelines for sewage for the tower. "I kept looking up at the height and it would make me happy. I was proud to be working on a building so high. It was a lot of heavy work," he said.
After three years of pipe fitting in the building, Ekram Ul Haq, employed by EVH JV, said: "Everything was unique on this building because of the height."
Haq said that safety was a priority. "All workers got training for safety and every thing went well."
Mohammad Javed Alam, a co-worker of Al Haq, said that things got a little stuffy when the exterior glass was installed and there was no fresh air on the top floors. "We worked from the 165th floor. Dubai looks good from up there," he said.
An insider titbit the workers were able to recollect involved a quiet visit from Bollywood's superstar Shah Rukh Khan. "He came inside one night with his family and looked around the Burj Khalifa," said Alam.
Mohammad Imtiaz, a piping foreman at EVH has spent several man-hours on the structure in the past few years. "I worked hard on the tallest tower," he said. "There was good motivation among the teams. The engineers were good and there was no work pressure," he said. Imtiaz is currently installing copper pipes on the top-most floors of the Burj Khalifa. Above the 160th floor, there are only terraces and places for viewing, he said.
During the construction of the building, Imtiaz said there were two major accidents. "We lost a co-worker who was not paying attention," he said. At a deep excavation site, the man was talking on the phone and fell into the hole while distracted, recalls Imtiaz. "There was nothing done without safety, but accidents still happen," he said.
Another accident involved a fire on ground level that was triggered by welding work but was soon put out.
Nanak Singh, a mason foreman with Al Futtaim, is working on the road works surrounding the building now. He said that there are a lot of small things to take care of still, such as underground pipelines. It could take six to twelve months to finish the minor work. The main work on the building is done, he said.
