Dubai International Airport

Dubai, known for its high rise buildings including the world’s tallest, the Burj Khalifa, and glitzy malls, has become one of the world’s leading holiday and business destinations.

To build itself as major transport hub for passengers and cargo travelling across the globe, in 2002 Dubai’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) initiated construction of the Dubai Airport Terminal 3 building and concourses 2 and 3. It covered an area of 750m by 500m and was excavated up to 25m deep. When it was completed in 2008 the Terminal 3 building was the largest building in the world per floor space and was the largest airport terminal in the world until September 2019, when Beijing Daxing International Airport opened. The Terminal 3 iconic building is constructed to look like an aeroplane wing and initially was exclusively for Emirates airlines.

Despite its arid, desert location, Dubai is on the coast of the Persian Gulf, and groundwater is present just 1 or 2 m below ground level. To facilitate the excavation works in the dry, WJ used our considerable experience of dewatering large scale projects in Europe and designed and installed a deepwell system. A key selling point of WJ’s solution was that despite the sheer scale of the project, all the deepwells were installed around the perimeter of the site. This meant that the contractor, Al Naboodah, could get on with the excavation and construction works without obstructions. At peak construction WJ were operating in excess of 200 deepwells as well as a fully automated data logger monitoring system that allowed WJ and their clients to monitor water levels across site in real time from a website.