Vida Mall Twin Tower Project

The Vida Mall on Plot 132-133 Downtown Development is a twin-tower comprising of 195 hotel rooms, and 614 serviced residences, along with a seven-storey retail podium that links both the towers. The luxurious project is located at the edge of Downtown Dubai and connected to the Dubai Mall through a dedicated link bridge. 

The building movements of structural elements in high-rise designs are an important consideration for design and construction. At the proposed Vida Mall Project, it was important to determine the effects of the building movements and anticipate these movements (which occur during construction and in the long term) in order to avoid any adverse effect on the performance of the structure. 

This included monitoring building movements such as foundation settlement, axial shortening, as well as creep and shrinkage (of concrete and composite elements). Further, the project was monitored for parameters like deflection, thermal movements (during construction), movements (due to construction loads), thermal movements, etc.

Encardio Rite’s sister concern, Rite Geosystems LLC in UAE, was awarded an I&M sub-contract for the turnkey monitoring solutions that included: 

• Supply, installation, and monitoring of geotechnical instruments 
• Establishment, measurements, and maintenance of the survey network
• Early warning through continuous settlement monitoring of the raft slab
• Survey of slab edge profiles, core walls verticality, and other verticality
• Monitoring building movements by supplying, installing, and monitoring various geotechnical and survey instruments during the entire construction period
• Manual and automatic monitoring
• Weekly & monthly reporting with evaluation & interpretation

Geotechnical instruments used for monitoring and surveying during construction activity included:

• Tilt Meters are used to measure inclination or tilt monitoring of both the towers. 
• Strain Gauges: To measure structural strain.
• Prism Target Fixed monitoring targets were installed to monitor 3D movements (x, y, and z).
• Surface Settlement Points are installed on the raft, to monitor the foundation settlement during the construction phase.
• Building Settlement Points are installed on the structure column, to measure vertical settlement.
• GNSS Receivers are used to measure primary and secondary networks.
• Digital Level: To measure the primary and secondary networks.

Dataloggers were used for the automatic collection and transmission of data from geotechnical sensors. Robotic total stations were used to automatically collect and transmit data from prism targets.