Ammann paves the way
The orbital highway is an essential corridor in the city of Doha, Qatar and an Ammann plant is helping to make the project a success.
The road will connect the main city of Doha with the ports of Qatar and the Saudi border. The highway project is about 40 km long with seven lanes. It is divided into four phases, with the current phase requiring the production of about 3 million tonnes of asphalt.
It is the biggest project in terms of quantity of asphalt in Qatar at the moment, said Youssef Ghadban, Plant Manager for Al Jaber & Makhlouf, which is manufacturing the asphalt. The company is a regional leader and has a significant presence in Qatar, where it operates five plants, and in Lebanon, where it operates four.
Productivity was a must on the large-scale road construction project. The 3 million tonnes of asphalt will have to be manufactured within two years.
It was a challenge for us because we were producing around 500,000 to 600,000 tonnes yearly, said Roger Makhlouf, Managing Director of Al Jaber & Makhlouf. Now it will be an average of 1 million to 1.5 million yearly, so its a big move and it was a big challenge for the company and for Ammann too because we had to customise plants for this project.
The production demands made plant reliability crucial. The ability to make varied mixes was another requirement.
Al Jaber & Makhlouf utilised 2 Ammann ABA 340 UniBatch Asphalt-Mixing Plants on the ring road project. The company credits Ammann support and the as1 Control System for helping it keep pace with the demanding highway project.
The as1 is the number one program, said Rabih El-Kattar, Plant Manager at Al Jaber & Makhlouf. Its easier. Its not complicated, especially when changing parameters. If you have any problem with this plant, the computer can show you how to fix it.
The UniBatch plants and as1 Control System helped the company meet demands for varied recipes, as different mixes were required for base, intermediate and wearing courses.
Quality was essential as well. The government is always looking for the best quality to apply on the road on the projects, said Ghadban. Together with our partner, Ammann, we are looking to achieve the type of quality they are asking for.
We consider Ammann to be our partner, said Roger Makhlouf. We have full support from them. We are connected on a daily basis, and we have their full backup and full support at any time. We believe the software that they have is one of the best and is giving us high precision in our production and very high consistency.
