The cranes, a 120 HC and a 200 EC-H, were supplied by Saudi Liebherr Company Ltd, a division of E A Juffali and Bros, via their Jeddah office.
Beach Tower, with its 40 floors is already a landmark on the primarily low- and medium-rise Corniche, is designed by one of Saudi Arabia’s leading architectural firms, Mohamed Harasani, which is headquartered in Jeddah. Talal Kurdi of Jeddah supplied the engineering consultancy services.
Jeddah’s Corniche is one of the city’s most impressive and pleasing features. Taking advantage of the city’s long seashore, the corniche is 20 miles in length and provides recreational facilities and superb views of the sea for citizens and visitors.
The corniche has been designed in three sections. The southern end emerges from the old part of Jeddah, while the central corniche, with three new bridges, an underpass providing access to the city centre, an open-air sculpture court, and a water sculpture is very much the recreational area.
The northern corniche, where Beach Tower is located, has made use of a shallow sea shelf varying in width from 200 to 300m to integrate the sea, roads, lakes, landscaping, sculptures and recreational facilities.
Liebherr’s HC series includes eight models from 800 to 5,000 mt, all designed for very high hook heights and very long jibs. The 120-HC model has a capacity of 8 tonnes and at Beach Tower is equipped with a 40-m jib.
The 200 EC-H 10 has a maximum hook height of 68.1 m, when the crane can handle a load of 2.65 tonnes, and a maximum lifting capacity of 10 tonnes.
Although this is a spacious area of the corniche, the plot of land on which Beach Tower stands is a confined one, and the two cranes were needed, one on each side of the building, to deploy materials for the duration of the construction phase.
Beach Tower will be topped out during the late summer of this year, and the first tenants will move in during late 2009.
