The final progress reports were due by the end of Thursday June 12, 2014. The interns had the majority of the day for free time to work on their extensive reports. The reports covered all site and office visits throughout the four weeks in Dubai. The reports were approximately 25 or more pages each. 

Mr. Yabroudi giving a final lecture

There were some short activities in the morning. Mr. Ian Harper, DCC contracts director, gave the results of a case study for a dispute between a contractor and a client. Mr. Yabroudi headed the contractor’s team while Dr. Clemence headed the client’s team. The contractor’s team won the case study arbitration. Mr. Yabroudi gave a brief final discussion on the most important concepts covered throughout the internship and advice to beginners in the workforce.

After time in the office, the interns visited the Dubai Museum and the gold souk. The museum had some small replicas of historic Dubai as well as some cultural aspects that are not as common in current day Dubai. The gold souk was an area with shops to purchase jewelry, souvenirs, and traditional Dubai attire.

Dubai Museum

Week 4: Day 25

The DSLIP interns ventured out of their hotel apartments on a warm Wednesday morning. During the van ride to the office all interns were very busy reviewing for the quiz that would greet them no earlier than 10:30am, a mere two hours away. Once in the office, the interns continued their studying.

Three DSLIP interns studying for the quiz.

The quiz came right around 10:30am. There were mixed feelings in the office after the quiz. Nashwa Hijazi was quoted as saying "The quiz was very fair and the bonus questions were really funny." after the quiz. However, once students got their graded quizzes back they found out that they all did really well.

Returned graded quiz.

 After all the matters regarding quizzes were settled, the interns continued working on their final reports. As expected all interns put tremendous amount of effort into their reports.

Mr. Jared Barczak working on his final report.

In the evening, the majority of interns went to Mall of Emirates to ski and snowboard and generally have a good time at Ski Dubai.

Week 4: Day 24

Tuesday morning, Team 2 was in the office busily working on their Final Progress Reports due Thursday as Team 1 visited the Conrad Hotel. In the afternoon after lunch, Mr. Nawfal from Eagle Electromechanical gave a presentation on wastewater treatment. He talked about the main components in wastewater and the various current processes used to treat it.

Later that evening, the group went out to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. Everyone was in great spirits, and some of the interns danced along to the Macarena. After everyone finished their main meals, a cake was brought out for Dr. Sam Clemence, Paul Andersen, and Jared Barczak to celebrate their recent and upcoming birthdays. They had to stand up on chairs in front of the entire restaurant as everyone sang happy birthday. At the end, each of them had whipped cream shoved in their faces. It was a memorable night full of laughter and great food.

Happy birthday!

Week 4: Day 23

On Monday 9^th of June, team 1 went directly to the offices to work on their final report while team 2 went to the Conrad Hotel. The hotel is currently in the Defects Liability Period and we had an engineering look at every detail with the help of Mr. Hicham and Mr. Andrew. After a three hour visit, team 2 went back to the offices and continued working on their final report.

In the afternoon, Mr. Abdallah Yabroudi and Mr. Ian Harper gave an arbitration case study to the students. We worked on the case study for around one hour then went back to the hotel to prepare ourselves for the final sport competition “Bowling”.

Bowling competition took place at 6:30 pm. It was really competitive and exciting as all the teams were tied in the sports activities competition. Finally team “A” headed by Mr. Yabroudi won the Bowling competition. After winning this final competition, team “A” ended the season with two wins crowning them as the Champions.

Week 4: Day 22

Sunday started off with a site visit to the Staff Accomodation in Jebel Ali for the staff of the Beach Start Beach Resort. Mr. T.R. Subrahmanyam , the project director, showed us around the project. The Structure of the building is precast concrete elements consisting of precast walls and hollow core slabs. We were introduced to different details in construction and in finishes along with the difficulties in this project.

Staff Accomodation

Kitchen in Staff Accomodation

We were back to the offices by afternoon were we had study time to prepare for our reports.

At 6:15 we moved from our accomodation to our final basketball game. Team D and Team A played against each other and team D was able to win after a very tense game. Team D then played against team S in the final game. Team S headed by Dr. Celemence won the tournament.

Tension between A and D team

D team winning the first game

Photo for the three teams

The winning team

Week 4: Day 21

Fareed Tower

Saturday started off with a site visit to Fareed Tower in the morning. No construction has been started yet, and currently secant piles are placed in order to ensure that water doesn't disturb the site; it is located next to the canal. Mr. Subrahmanyam, the Project Director, went over some of the building details and gave us a brief review of moment diagrams in terms of designed proper support for a structure. He also explained that the most difficult aspect of the project would be ensure that the concrete columns are perfectly straight because windows will be placed between them, so there is minimal room for any error.

 

After lunch and a couple of hours in the offices, the DSLIP interns were off to enjoy the afternoon on a yacht! It was a fantastic, relaxing day, filled with music, laughter, seashell hunting, and lots of salt water.

Our personal yacht!

The girls and guys showing off their dance moves.

Everyone got the chance to jump into the sea.

Enjoying the ride up front.

Lovely sunset from the yacht.

Week 3: Day 20

Atlantis Aquaventure

On Friday, we left hotel at 9:30 am to Atlantis through Jumeirah Monorail to enjoy the view on our way.

Once we arrived, we immediately got ready and went to the Water Park to start the fun. It was an amazing experience, especially the Leap of faith and Poseidon’s revenge that some of us went twice on.

At 2:00 pm, we got very hungry and ate lunch in barracuda’s restaurant. Afterwards, we went for a tour in The Lost of Chambers to discover the myth of Atlantis and its marine inhabitants.

Indeed we didn’t have enough of fun yet and went over the Aquaventure private beach, where some played volleyball and others chilled on the grass cheering for their colleagues.

 

Before the Atlantis day ends, we went on the lazy river ride to chill out, and have some fun after a long sunny day.

Of course, the day can’t finish without a crazy group photo.

Week 3: Day 18

Office visit to e-construct

On Wednesday morning we had a presentation by e-construct in Dubai Internet City where Mr. Jack Karaa introduced us to the company's profile, the services it provides and the projects it has worked on. Mr. Karaa also explained the uses of pre-stressed concrete and the importance of the detailed design they do on value engineering. Then Mr. Ahmed Saad gave a presentation on post-tensioned concrete and explained all about pre-stressing and post-tensioning structures. Next, Dr. Moussa Alawneh shared an outstanding project of e-construct that he is personally involved in for building the bridge on Abu Dhabi airport using pre-stressed concrete.

After that, the students went back to the office where they had study time for the rest of the day. During that time, the quizzes were returned and corrected. A name between the 7 people who had the highest grades was to be chosen at random, and Jared was the lucky one! 

Week 3: Day 19

Delays. Disputes and Arbitration + Sustainable Construction/LEED Certification

Today's lecture was divided into two parts.
During the first part, Mr. Ian Harper gave a a general overview of the FIDIC Standard contract forms, more specifically the Red Book (Conditions of Contract for Construction). We further discussed the concepts of EOT (Extension of Time) and LD (Liquidated Damages). It was an interactive session where every student read a part about Claims, Disputes, Litigation and Arbitration.

One thing we learned from this lecture is that it is always better to go for an amicable settlement, in order to keep business relationships stable.

The second part of the lecture mainly focused on the importance of Green Building nowadays, in a world where the Construction field  produces 30-40% of the toxic emissions in the atmosphere. We also got introduced to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), its main objectives and some recent statistics and fact about the application of Green buildings.

Our lectures comprised few videos concerning the two topics, which were provided by the right hand and facilitator of the program Mr. Bassam Haddad!
The last video was a quick overview about Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, which will be a complete Green Environment Friendly city with no emissions at all.

In the afternoon we went on a site visit to the "Three Villas" Project.  The villas are each identical and being built to sell/rent as permanent homes.  The villas are very upscale homes.  The built up area is 43,600 sq ft and each villa has a ground level, first level, and a flat roof.  The structures are made of traditional concrete.  The flooring is mainly marble with some walnut wood finish.  The walls are painted over plaster.  The villas each have a pool that has a wave-resistance swimming feature, and a fountain feature.  The original contract cost of this project is AED 34,000,000 (approx. $9,000,000).  Work was started in April 2013 and is expected to finish this July.  DCC is going to complete the job three months ahead of schedule! 

Bedroom, marble tiling black area is plywood sheeting, a wood surface finish is going to be placed on top

One crane is still onsite bringing some MEP equipment (Air conditioning units etc...)  up to the roofs