Saudi Royals Restart Work on World’s Tallest Tower

The Saudi Royal family has restarted construction of what is set to be the world’s tallest building, the one-kilometre-tall Jeddah Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Through Jeddah Economic Company (JEC), the Saudis have invited 14 firms, among them China Harbour, China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Skanska, and Strabag to bid by December for a contract to complete the project.

Almabani, Bawani, Consolidated Contractors Company, El-Seif Engineering Contracting, and Hyundai Engineering Construction have also been invited.

Others include Mohammed Abdulmohsin al-Kharafi & Sons, Nesma & Partners, Powerchina, Samsung C+T, and Saudi Freyssinet.

“The tower is back in full motion,” a source close to the project told the news agency MEED this week.

JEC, which is owned by Kingdom Holding Company, the Saudi Royal family’s investment vehicle, with a 40% stake, Bakhsh Group with a 40% stake, and Sharbatly Group with a 20% share, has been working on the project since 2014.

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Construction of Jeddah Tower, initially known as Kingdom Tower, ground to a sudden halt in 2017 at 63 storeys, standing 250 metres.

At that time, Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), the contractor, had completed a third of the construction work for the superstructure of the tower.

Germany’s Bauer had completed the piling work for the building.

If the project goes as expected, Jeddah Tower will stand at an estimated 1,008 metres – over seven times the height of Nairobi’s Times Tower.

It will comprise over 500,000 square meters of floor space and stand 180 meters taller than the Burj Khalifa.

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The 252-storey tower will have 89 more floors than the 163-storey Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai – which is currently the world’s tallest building, and will also offer the highest observation deck in the world.

“The floor count is 252 floors with occupied floors being 167. It’s a mixed-use development with 7 floors for offices 7 floors for hotel, 11 floors of service apartments, and different grades of housing all the way to the observatory tower,” JEC said in an earlier press statement.

The actual tower starts at just over 20 metres above ground level, led there by a ramp and podium around the tower. The largest floor in the building is 85,000 sq m consisting of a car park to accommodate 2,200 cars.

The contract for the construction of Jeddah Tower was initially signed with SBG for US$1.2 billion, and the entire project is estimated to cost US$20 billion.

Although SBG is no longer working as the project’s contractor, the consulting team remains the same, with Adrian Smith as the architect and Lebanon’s Dar al-Handasah (Shair & Partners) as the engineering consultant.

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