Story

P     Public  houses project is a project contains 2000              residential   one  story  family units.

This project is located at Madina Munwarah in Saudi Arabia. The project was built by Saudi government for  Saudi citizen  , and it was given to  them as along term loan for 25 years free of interest . Even though these houses has  been  built one story , but the original  design had been considered for two story family houses for future expansion , the area of ground floor for  each unit  is  ( 225)  m2 ( 2420 )ft2.

               These houses had been built using precast concrete wall and slab panels . When people received there houses immediately they started thinking of the expansion of the second floor. Madinah municipality was approving only expansion by precast concrete panels similar to the ground floor . The construction cost of the expansion of second floor using precast concrete  panels is costing  SR (170,000 ) $(46,000 ) . This higher cost of expansion of second floor  was the main reason for  slow down the expansion process of these houses ,  even though the expansion was very necessarily due to big number of Saudi family (average family size 5-6 members ) . Due to this I decided to submit a proposal to Madinah municipality to use load bearing wall construction system for the expansion of second floor and using joist slabs precast concrete ribs with hollow brick for ceiling . I have used none facing load bearing brick for wall (150mm x 200mm x 400mm)    (6 in x 8 in x 16 in ) (width x height x length ). The compressive strength of these brick is 150 kg\cm2 (2134 psi). The construction cost of my proposal is SR (90,000)$(24,000) which is about 50 % less than the previous  approved proposal using precast concrete panels . This proposals had been approved by municipality on September 2006 , and from that time until now 500 units had been added the second floor.

                 I feel I had done very good job in term of reducing 50 % the cost and given a thinking of other design proposal using the technique   of value engineering study for this very important project. I would like to share this experience with Realestate organization and Housing development companies in Saudi Arabia and arabian Gulf countries for reducing construction cost and achieving competitve price  , and hoping that my project will win the prize of being project of the         year 2008 .                                                           

                                                                                           Kamal H. Algobli

Saudi Arabia

Madinah Munwarah

algobali@gmail.com