We are proud to have delivered this iconic new cultural hub alongside Foster & Partners and the Emirate of Sharjah.
McLaren Construction UAE completed and handed over Sharjah’s new House of Wisdom project, an iconic library and cultural centre, situated near to Sharjah’s international airport and built on behalf of Shurooq, Sharjah’s investment and development authority. Designed by Foster & Partners, our team worked closely with the designers to overcome engineering challenges and programme pressure whilst implementing additional precautions to protect people from COVID-19.
Working directly for the Head of Shurooq, Mr Marwan Jassim Al Sarkal, who had a very personal interest in this high-profile project for the Emirate of Sharjah, our team overcame numerous challenges. This started in the initial discussions on the tender process right through to the final handover with McLaren achieving successful and timely delivery of this amazing project.
Foster and Partners, who are famous for quality architecture and complex iconic buildings, were the lead designer, heading the team and acting as Engineer for the project, working with Aurecon on the structural and MEP. Arcadis were the PMC.
Health and safety
The House of Wisdom team had zero lost time injuries overall and zero injuries in 2020, resulting in over two million safe on site working hours.
Achieving mandatory levels of Health and Safety performance can be a real challenge. Our approach was welcomed, and McLaren worked closely to ensure that operatives were properly looked after and processes and protocols watertight, which not only improved efficiency on the project but also morale.
With between 600 and 800 people on site at any one time in a very congested area and a building at different levels, our team performed incredibly to achieve over two million working hours with no LTI or injury to any of our workforce or members of the supply chain.
Third party inspectors on site for other compliance, praised the high standards of safety, informing us that we were going ‘’way above and beyond” what they have seen previously”, a testament to our team and ethos’.
We focused on an open and transparent approach with complex and lengthy value engineering to bring the project in line with the budget, delivering the highest standards of construction safety seen in Sharjah for many years and finishing on time.
We also cannot forget the massive challenge of Covid, border and travel restrictions and material supply issues. Despite all this, we ensured safe delivery for all staff, labour and the supply chain, utilising our extensive Covid -19 Management Plan, which again was highly commended by senior executives visiting the site on a regular basis.
