First overwater villa installed at The Red Sea’s Sheybarah Island Resort
Tailor-made solutions protect delicate marine environment
Mammoet welcomed the start of 2023 with the delivery of the very first batch of modularly constructed villas for Red Sea Global’s Sheybarah Island Resort. A total of four villas were loaded-in at the Port of Hamriyah, in Sharjah, and were shipped to the island be installed at the site.
A new milestone was achieved with the installation of the first prefabricated, stainless steel overwater villa orb on its foundation.
For the installation, Mammoet used its 650t capacity Demag CC3800 crawler crane positioned on top of Mammoet’s modified barge, ALE 250. The shallow draft of the barge meant that there would be minimal disturbance to the sensitive marine environment of this unique and picturesque archipelago in the Red Sea.
At the construction jetty, the crane loaded and placed the first orb on the barge deck and sailed to the installation area. Once at the location, the barge was positioned using a hyper-accurate GPS system and the barge’s own winches, for precise alignment with the foundation. The barge was then stabilized using a retrofitted 300t spud jacking system provided by Combifloat – Mammoet’s partner for floating and self-elevating marine equipment suitable for nearshore operations. Safe and efficient lifting, lowering and (re)positioning of the barge was achieved through a locally controlled jacking mechanism and a 4-point mooring system.
The crane was raised to lift the orb into place – its superlift was replaced by a system designed specifically for the project where the back mast of the CC3800 is “tied back” to the barge. This gave the crane enough capacity to skillfully place the orb onto the foundation without requiring the additional mass of a superlift tray.
“Creative engineering at its best. 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 was awarded the contract to transport and install all 73 villa pods back in May 2022. To support the shipment of the villas from the UAE to Saudi Arabia, Mammoet teamed up with P&O Maritime Logistics, a leading provider of critical logistics and marine solutions.
