Saudi Bauer Foundation Contractors piling contract win signals start of work on Jeddah’s one kilometre-high Kingdom Tower.

Bauer Spezialriefbau’s division Saudi Bauer Foundation Contractors has announced that it has been awarded the $32.24 million contract to complete the enabling piling work on the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah.

The announcement made last week means that a clear picture is beginning to emerge of how the world’s tallest tower will be built.

Saudi Bauer’s contract will involve 270 bored piles with diameters varying between 1.5m to 1.8m. With the contract worth more than $30 million, the piles will cost $110,000 each.

According to Saudi Bauer Foundation, the enabling works are expected to begin before the end of the year and are planned to take about 10 months to complete. Two Bauer BG 28 and two BG 40 piling rigs will be deployed.

Due to its enormous height and architect AS+GG’s spire design the Kingdom Tower has drawn comparisons with current world record title holder Burj Khalifa in Dubai. After the announcement of the Jeddah tower, it was assumed that its construction would also be similar.

However a pro-longed test piling phase, which is rumoured to have seen a below ground up revision of the tower’s design, revealed that the Kingdom Tower’s proximity to the coastline and material differences in the ground would demand an alternative strategy to the foundations.

The piling work on Burj Khalifa in 2004, involved the placing of 192 piles down to a depth of 50m. Kingdom Tower’s 270 piles will need to go down to 110m.

The Kingdom Tower is due to be completed by the end of 2018 and will need to scale at a rate of four floors per month to be completed in 2018. Burj Khalifa also averaged a rate of three floors per month.