Bauer completes foundation work of world’s tallest building in Saudi-Arabia

During 2013, Saudi BAUER Foundation Contractors Ltd. – a subsidiary of specialist foundation engineering company BAUER Spezialtiefbau GmbH based in Schrobenhausen, Bavaria – executed the foundations for what will be the tallest building in the world: the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The foundation works were completed at the end of 2013.

Kingdom City is a new urban quarter under construction on an extensive five square-kilometre site in the north of Jeddah. The Kingdom Tower will be the major landmark at the heart of the new neighbourhood. With a height of 1,001 metres, it will dwarf all previous record-breaking buildings worldwide.

Saudi Bauer installed extremely long piles to install the foundations of the mammoth building. The works involved installing 72 piles of 110 metres in length and 1.5 metres in diameter; a further 154 piles of 1.5 metres in diameter and between 49 and 89 metres in length; and 44 piles with a diameter of 1.8 metres, all down to a depth of 50 metres.

The drilling was carried out using BG series rigs from BAUER Maschinen GmbH. The long piles were installed using two modified Bauer BG 40 rotary drilling rigs specially configured for long kellys.