Mammoet has installed the first prefabricated stainless steel “villa orb” on its underwater foundation at Red Sea Global’s Sheybarah Island Resort on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.
It used its 650t capacity Demag CC3800 crawler crane mounted on Mammoet’s shallow-draft ALE 250 barge to do the lift.
From its position on the barge, the crane loaded the orb and sailed to the installation area where the vessel was positioned using a GPS system and the barge’s own winches.
The barge was then stabilized using a retrofitted 300t spud jacking system provided by Combifloat, Mammoet’s partner for floating operations.
Controlled jacking and a four-point mooring system helped with exact positioning.
‘Never gets tedious’
“Creative engineering at its best,” said Mammoet project engineer, Robert van Tinteren. “It has been an exciting nine months building up to this point, but it never gets tedious to see the incredible things we at Mammoet can do when we put our minds to it!”
Mammoet won the contract to transport and install all 73 villa pods in May 2022.
In the first batch, four villas pods were loaded-in at the Port of Hamriyah, in Sharjah, UAE before being shipped to the island.
Sheybarah Island is located in the southeast of the archipelago on the Red Sea.
The 73-key resort was designed by Dubai-based architectural firm Killa Design.
