SGB Al-Dabal, the biggest manufacturer and supplier of Scaffolding & Formwork products and services within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, approached Scaftec in 2018 to design an access scaffold around the cooling tower at Jubail Industrial City, the eastern region of Saudi Arabia. The role of the scaffold was to provide access to the cooling tower that has revealed delamination of concrete caused by its slow penetration by sea salt air. This process led to corrosion of the re-bar and finally disintegration of concrete that caused dangerous environment and reduced structural strength of the structure that could be stopped only by the maintenance work.
The main challenge of this project was not only the massive size of the structure with 52m height and 232m perimeter length but also the conical shape of the cooling tower with 24 massive cooling fans at the base, which has to work during the entire project life span to provide cool water to adjacent plants. All the above combined with the significantly reduced structural strength of the cooling tower has created a very challenging task.
After the design process has finished, the construction process has started. Although the distance between the construction site and our Glasgow office is more than 5000 km, we have provided regular site visits to help with the setting-out of scaffold base and during many other construction stages until January 2020, when the scaffold erection has completed.