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One floor per week
Contractor: DCC (Dubai Contracting Company L.L.C.)
The impressive skyline of Dubai has been enriched by a 358 m high skyscraper. MEVA climbing systems and formwork made an important contribution in keeping to the tight schedule in the construction of City Tower One, with office space and 600 residential units on 93 floors.
City Tower One in Dubai growing at a rapid pace
The impressive skyline of Dubai has been enriched by a 358 m high skyscraper. MEVA climbing systems and formwork made an important contribution in keeping to the tight schedule in the construction of City Tower One, with office space and 600 residential units on 93 floors.
MEVA had already established a base in Dubai in 2008 and contributed to the construction of the world‘s tallest building to date, the Burj Khalifa, with its MevaDec slab formwork. Since then, many important projects in the Emirate have been successfully realised with solutions from the Black Forest-based company, such as the well-known Museum of the Future. On the other side of Sheikh Zayed Road, City Tower One rose rapidly into the blue sky.
The construction company Dubai Contracting Company L.C.C. (DCC) specialises in high-rise buildings with climbing formwork. After intensive discussions with a team led by MEVA UAE Sales Manager Mahmoud Siksek, the deal was finalised. DCC relied on the German formwork specialist‘s technology for the first time to erect the central core – the backbone of the structure, so to speak. The around 30 x 20 m core extends to the top floor and contains numerous other core walls for staircases and lifts.
MGC-H and MAC in continuous use
Two combinations of formwork and hydraulic climbing system were used. The inner core walls were erected with the MAC (MEVA Automatic Climbing) and the lightweight AluFix wall formwork. For the outer walls of the central core, the rail-guided MGC-H (MEVA Guided Climbing) formed a fixed unit with enclosed working platforms and the Mammut 350 wall formwork. This was done to prevent clashing with steel plates constantly changing locations on each floor. Mammut 350 with its minimum ties/sqm. was introduced to the mix to minimise tie clashes on outer walls. The modular climbing system is being used on this project as a complete system with three working levels mounted one above the other. At the customer‘s request for high flexibility, MEVA planned and divided the entire climbing system into four independently climbable L-shaped units. This means that each corner could be climbed individually depending on the construction progress. In this way, even faster construction progress could be achieved. MGC-H and MAC have proven themselves worldwide in numerous high-rise buildings through a high level of safety and rapid construction progress.

All climbing units were safely and conveniently installed on the ground, erected by crane at the end of April 2023 and suspended from the lower concreted walls. In July 2023, the 12th floor of the central core was concreted, and exactly 12 months later, 70 floors were finished. This means 58 floors were completed in one year.
“One floor per week was the target,” explains MEVA engineer Stefan Kappler, who is delighted that this was achieved early on in the project and has since been exceeded – most recently, more than six storeys per month were being built. Kappler is a member of the Central Application Technology team at MEVA‘s headquarters in Haiterbach and, together with his colleague Jochen Stoss, is responsible for coordinating this project, which was outstanding in the truest sense of the word.
Work on the core was completed on time in October 2024 and the MEVA systems were dismantled.

Three teams working closely together
City Tower One was an interdisciplinary pilot project for MEVA. The time factor was challenging, which is why the tasks were divided between three MEVA working groups: Kappler’s team was responsible for the MGC-H application; colleagues in Singapore were in charge of MAC use; and MEVA Gulf based in Dubai was mainly responsible for the formwork planning. The time span from receipt of the order to delivery on site was short, but the three teams quickly networked.
The climbing formwork was assembled 24/7 on the construction site. As DCC had no previous experience with MEVA, the construction teams on site were intensively supervised and trained by MEVA supervisors. They were soon able to work independently. MEVA‘s method statements – step-by-step instructions for the safe use of the technology – also provided support.
Successful with customised solutions
Constantly changing wall thicknesses of between 80 and 30 cm and several projections and recessions have made the construction of the central core a highly technical challenge. The background to this is that the walls have a thicker concrete belt in three sections covering four floors each for statics reasons (floors 22-25, 45-48, 69-72). This means that the walls must alternate between jumping inwards four times (by 5, 30, 35 and 40 cm) and outwards three times (by 15, 25 and 30 cm). The most complex jump from 50 to 80 cm wall thickness was mastered on level 69.
The jumps not only affect the distances between the working platforms, where gaps of up to 40 cm are bridged quickly and flexibly using flap solutions. The preparatory work was much more complex. MEVA’s department for special formwork design developed glide shoes for the MGC-H rails, which are used when the climbing formwork is lifted away from the wall and upwards by crane. The sliding shoes, in which the vertical MGC-H beams are fixed, can be pushed away from the finished concreted wall to the desired distance by means of an arm. The climbing formwork remains connected to the structure at all times and is permanently guided. Specially manufactured threaders slide up with it and thread themselves into the shoe on the next level.
There was not enough space between the wall of the central core and an inner wall for the approximately 3 m wide working platforms of the MGC-H. Here, MEVA found a solution with customised brackets and compact working platforms that allowed the reinforcement to be put in position in comfortable and safe working conditions.
MEVA systems:
- Wall formwork Mammut 350
- Wall formwork AluFix
- Climbing system MGC-H
- Climbing system MAC
- Special formwork
Project:
City Tower One, Dubai (UAE)
Contractor:
DCC (Dubai Contracting Company L.L.C.)
Engineering and support:
MEVA Schalungs-Systeme GmbH, Haiterbach, Germany
MEVA Formwork Systems, Singapur
MEVA Formwork Trading L.L.C., Dubai
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