Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre gears up for phase 2

Having been central to the delivery of phase one of the Abu Dhabi national exhibition centre (ADNEC), built in a record eight months, delivered under budget and opened just a year ago, Mace Group has now been appointed to project manage the second phase.

Mace Group's involvement started in 2006 when it was appointed as client representative for the demolition of the existing exhibition centre, construction of the first half of the new facilities and refurbishment of the ADNEC's existing grandstand. In order to meet the fast-track construction schedule imposed by ADNEC, Mace operations director Andy Blackburn initiated a partnering form of management. This collaborative way of working, which sees all parties working as one integrated team, is proving very successful and ADNEC is now adopting it on all projects.

ADNEC was inaugurated by His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, The President of the UAE on February 18th 2007, when the centre hosted its inaugural event with the world's largest defense exhibition, IDEX 2007. Mace project director Zvonko Stefanovski commented: “In my 27 years of construction experience, this project is by far the fastest that I have ever seen and it is credit to the Mace team that we are progressing so well."

Phase II involves the expansion of exhibition facilities to a total of 11 halls, with 55,000 square metres of exhibition floor space or the equivalent of eight football pitches. There will also be a multipurpose hall with retractable seating for 6,000 people and two multi story car parks for 8,000 cars. In addition there will be an 18,000 square metre concourse making it the largest air conditioned exhibition concourse in the world. Construction is scheduled for completion in August 2008 in time for ADIPEC 2008, the biggest ever petroleum exhibition.

Phase IIB will see the construction of the first Starwood Aloft hotel in the Middle East region. This 400+ room urban- influenced design hotel is a vision of the W Hotel brand. The hotel will incorporate loft type rooms, three restaurants, a gym and roof top swimming pool. The project is currently on target for completion in September 2009, in time for the first F1 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi.

Mace is managing £320m of work for ADNEC and the exhibition centre is just part of the £1 billion major redevelopment of the entire area. In addition to ADNEC there will be a new five star Hyatt hotel on which Mace is the project manager and a new 23 tower micro city on which Mace is the logistics project manager.

Find out more about ADNEC