Working in Qatar - General Overview

After working 14 months in the construction field in Qatar, i can give a small overview regarding some very useful hints that may help any lebanese engineer, or other, who intends to work in the construction field in Qatar and that would he saving him the time and the price that he would pay to learn such small, and yet vital informations regarding the differences in the construction field between working in Lebanon and working in Qatar.

I will try to sumarize here such useful differences (of course they apply on "normal" projects and this excludes high rise buildings):

1- The main problems that you may face in a construction project in Qatar are not technical problems (since almost all the designs here are similar) but the problems that you will face are the supply of materials (mainly cement and sand) and the labors as you will have a limited number of visas to get your labors from overseas and you will find yourself severely short of staff.

2- Spread footings or even combined footings are not very used here. Usually you excavate around 1.5 meters and you just start your construction. The ground beams are not constructed at the footings level as in lebanon, on the contrary, here they are constructed on the ground level and the ground slabs are seperated from the ground beams by use of flexible material and the said slabs are only supported on the backfill. (tie beams are only used on the footings level where excentric footings are used).

3- Upon concreting the footings and the neck columns, hollow block wall is constructed on the outer circumference of the building and it is filled with concrete ad bitumen painted from the outside. Dont let this wall fool you, upon backfilling, you will backfill the outside and the inside of these walls. That brings the thought number 4 below to my mind.

4- The hollow blocks here are not similar to Lebanese blocks, they are exactly like the Hourdis, i.e. open from both ends with two compartments inside to allow for filling it concrete where needed.

5- Almost in 90% of the slabs, drop beams are used to make it quite impossible to see a slab without drop beams in it.

6- Waterproofing is applied on almost all the roof slabs but with one vital difference from Lebanon. In Qatar, the screed concrete is applied on top of the waterproofing membrane while in Lebanon it is applied under the membrane.

7- The plaster here is usually applied in only one coat over a rush coat instead of the two coats used in Lebanon.

8- The main problem may be the wood shuttering in here (in arabic the morine) Its load bearing is way lower than the Lebanese shuttering and that may surprise you (as it surprised me in my first concreting day when the wood fell apart but thank God it was foundation) so please be aware of that fact and minimize the distances betwen your supporting shuttering wood (al faras as it is called in Lebanon) in order to avoid any un-desired surprises.

9- In case you want to work here "a la libanaise' you would probably want to bring the "clipses" for the 6mm re-bars from Lebanon as you will not find them here in the local market.

10- Two types of sand are avaiable here: The washed sand used for the concrete and the rush coat and the fine sand used for plaster works and backfilling of pipes. The price of the washed sand is at least 5 to 10 times more than the fine sand and the shortages occur on the washed sand and not the fine sand.

Up to this moment, these are the main issues that com to my mind, will post more shortly. Please feel free to comment about anything and i will reply as soon as i can.

Who am I?

Just a little introduction about me for those who dont know me. I am a Lebanese guy married to Rita an i work as a civil engineer. I am living currently in Qatar with my wife where I work for a construction company.

I am still not sure what to put in my blog, until then, see you all