Window-cleaning the world’s tallest building: Dubai, United Arab Emirates — It’s hard work cleaning the windows of the world’s tallest building, but somebody has to do it. The Burj Khalifa in Dubai is covered in 24,000 panes of glass. The workers who clean them start at the 160th floor and work their way down. That’s more than 2,700 feet. Before they start their work, they check and double-check their harnesses and ropes. They also measure wind speed because a gust of wind could be dangerous. It takes three months to clean every window, and then crews start all over again.
Meanwhile in China..
Climbing duo Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov scaled the 632 metre building without any ropes.
Shanghai Tower skywalkers climb second tallest building in world without safety equipment: Two Russian climbers filmed themselves defying gravity (and death) by climbing the world’s second tallest building without any ropes or climbing gear. Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov used head cameras to film themselves breaking into and climbing the still unfinished Shanghai Tower in China, as they scaled the 632m structure without any safety gear.
Their cameras show vertigo-inducing panoramas of Shanghai hundreds of metres below throughout their ascent. The pair even passed clouds on their journey to the top. The Tower will be one of the tallest buildings in the world upon its completion, second only to the 830 metre Burj Khalifa in the UAE, the tallest man-made structure in the world. When both climbers reach the top, their head-cams show them peering down into the abyss below. Makhorov told Yahoo! News: "We had to wait for hours for the clouds to part but it was well worth the wait, the view was like something from an aircraft window. "As soon as we saw a gap in the clouds were climbed right to the top of the crane and were able to get some great shots of the city below."
Don't look down! Vadim Makhorov sits in a cage above the Shanghai Tower, with the city sprawled more than 2,000 feet beneath him.
Vadim Makhorov and Vitaly Raskalov captured these shots from a height that would make most people sick.
If the rain begins to fall in the middle of a job, the cleaners sometimes have to start all over again.
Weather that leaves UAE men swinging in the rain: Window cleaners who hang from ropes outside skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are constantly watching for change in the weather. "The last time we saw rain like this was a few years ago. In 2012 it only rained once. It's not the hard rain that cleans things, it's a muddy rain and things get even worse," said Alain El Tawil, the managing director at Gecko.
If the rain begins to fall in the middle of a job, the cleaners sometimes have to start all over again. Gecko cleaners were halfway through cleaning a building in Abu Dhabi when it started to rain. The job that should have taken 20 days will now probably take 30. "We have to do it again," Mr El Tawil shrugged.
Rain is not their only problem. Amel Vriesmann, head of the rope access division at Megarme, said: "We need to stay within the parameters of the winds. The limit is 20-25 knots depending on the scope of work you do. When the rain becomes severe, we pull out. But a few drops don't stop us."
Last week's thunder and lightning had cleaners abseiling down to safety. "Once we saw lightning, we were off the building. We have a daily weather forecast email among all the management. Rain is OK but thunder and lightning is a no-go," he said.
World's Highest Window Cleaners - It Took Us Three Months To Clean Burj Khalifa (Nick Vassilev) - It took an Australian window cleaning company 3 months to clean the windows of the tallest building in the world - Burj Khalifa. Ever wondered about how they keep the windows of these skyscrapers clean? The usual options available to window cleaners such as ladders and high-level Reach and Wash cleaning systems aren’t an option there.
London, UK -- Travel and tourism websites, programmes and brochures continually bring us pictures of tall skyscrapers in some far-off land, man-made mountains of glittering glass and steel. But pause to think about what has to go on to keep the windows of these skyscrapers, such as the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sparkling and clean.
Usually, window cleaners working with exterior windows above the ground have several options. “We encourage our window cleaners to use high-reach window washers that can be operated from the ground for health and safety reasons,” said a spokesperson from the London-based cleaning company Anyclean, which offers window cleaning alongside a range of other cleaning services. “Ladders are OK if used correctly for two-storey houses and skylights on bungalows. The Reach & Wash machines can reach up 75 feet, which takes care of most domestic and office window cleaning situations, but for anything higher than this, you need cradles, harnesses and cherry pickers.”
So what did the company responsible for keeping the windows of the Burj Khalifa clean do? The Burj Khalifa is the world’s tallest building at 2717 feet tall with a total of 24,830 windows, which make up 1,292,500 square feet of glass to clean. The Australian company CoxGomyl, which is responsible for getting the windows clean for the opening ceremony (held back in 2010), took three months to complete the process of cleaning the windows.
This window cleaning team specialises in making equipment known as Building Maintenance Units (BMUs) as well as other high-rise high-tech window cleaning equipment. A number of these BMUs are permanently in place on the Burj Khalifa and the machines use a system of tracks and cradles to reach every single window. The tracks are built into the exterior façade of the building, and window cleaners are carried in these cradles (which are housed in special cavities inside the building when not in use) to where they can work at washing the windows. To clean the windows, they use ordinary soap and water. “You can imagine how expensive it would be if they used chemical window cleaning products,” said the representative from Anyclean. “But water does work well at cleaning just about everything.”
The window cleaners who operate in the highest BMU on the Burj Khalifa hold the current record for world’s highest window cleaners. “Good for them,” said the Anyclean representative. “But I think I like keeping my feet on the ground!”
909 high-rises, 448 skyscrapers in Dubai... But do you know how to survive an earthquake? Tall order: Dubai has 909 completed high-rises, including world’s tallest tower, tallest hotel and tallest residential buildings (By Vicky Kapur) - Two major earthquakes have rocked the Arab world and the UAE in the month of April: the first one on April 9, and the second one on April 16. Both the earthquakes were follwed by minor aftershocks. A 6.3 magnitude earthquake shook Iran and the rest of the Arab world at around 4pm UAE time on April 9, 2013, followed by smaller aftershocks. The death toll from the quake was last reported at 37, with hundreds others injured, mostly in Iran.
The epicenter of the April 16 quake, of 7.8 magnitude, was also in Iran, near the border with Pakistan, and it rocked the region at 2.44pm UAE time (10.44am GMT). The UAE's official seismology authority, National Centre of Metrology and Seismology, confirmed to Emirates 24|7 that the epicentre of the most recent quake was 650km off the coast of Ras Al Khaimah in UAE. However, the tremors from the quake could be felt in locations as far and wide as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Manama, parts of Saudi Arabia as well as in Oman, with minor swaying of high-rises reported in these locations.
Earthquakes are not common in Dubai and the rest of the UAE, but nature has its way of showing who’s the boss every once in a while. Perhaps because we are not used to experiencing frequent tremors, residents of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, especially those living and working in high-rises, may not necessarily be adept at knowing what to do when tremors strike. It is no secret that Dubai is home to the tallest residential skyscraper cluster in the world. Not only does Dubai boast of the tallest building in the world, the imposing Burj Khalifa, but also the tallest residential tower (Princess Tower), the tallest hotel in the world (JW Marriott Marquis Dubai), among many more.
According to Emporis, a global provider of building information, Dubai has 909 high-rise buildings , including 448 skyscrapers (comprising 40 floors or more). According to SkyscraperPage.com, Dubai has 387 towers that are more than 99 metres in height, of which 84 are more than 202 metres tall and 26 are 301 metres or more in height. Indeed, there are three towers in Dubai that are at least half a kilometre (500 metres) in height. That’s a tall order, indeed, if there was one.
While we’ve all come to live and love our high-rises in Dubai, we can’t all claim to know about what do in case an earthquake strikes. Proof of this was the recent Iran quake, tremors of which were felt by us here in Dubai. There was confusion all along, with a number of office and residential buildings evacuated on the one hand, and with others going along with their daily chores as if nothing had happened. But if you need to be prepared the next time tremors strike, wherever in the world you are, you’ll do well to understand the following pointers (SOURCES: Earthquake Country and Go Los Angeles.
INDOORS: DROP, COVER, HOLD ON…
• DROP to the ground; take COVER by getting under a sturdy table or other piece of furniture; and HOLD ON until the shaking stops. If there isn’t a table or desk near you, cover your face and head with your arms and crouch in an inside corner of the building. Check out this PDF .
• Stay away from glass, windows, outside doors and walls, and anything that could fall, such as lighting fixtures or furniture.
• Quickly move to a safe location in the room such as under a strong desk, a strong table, or along an interior wall. The goal is to protect yourself from falling objects and be located near the structural strong points of the room. Avoid taking cover near windows, large mirrors, hanging objects, heavy furniture, heavy appliances or fireplaces.
• If you are cooking, turn off the stove and take cover.
• Stay in bed if you are there when the earthquake strikes. Hold on and protect your head with a pillow, unless you are under a heavy light fixture, window or anything else that could fall. In that case, move to the nearest safe place (i.e. under a desk or in an inside corner).
• Use a doorway for shelter only if it is in close proximity to you and if you know it is a strongly supported, load-bearing doorway. Brace yourself on the side with the hinges to avoid the door swinging at you.
• Stay inside until shaking stops and it is safe to go outside. Research has shown that most injuries occur when people inside buildings attempt to move to a different location inside the building or try to leave.
• Be aware that the electricity may go out or the sprinkler systems or fire alarms may turn on.
• DO NOT use the elevators, even if they are working. There may be aftershocks.
• If you’re in your hotel room, stay there. There are usually aftershocks, and sometimes they may be worse than the original earthquake. Under a sturdy desk or in an inside corner of your room is the safest place to be, even if you’re on the 40th floor. If there’s a heavy bookcase next to a match-stick desk, don’t get under the desk.
• If you are in a restaurant, get under the table.
OUTDOORS: Stay Put
• Move to an open area where falling objects are unlikely to strike you.
• Move away from buildings, powerlines, streetlights, utility wires and trees.
• Once in the open, stay there until the shaking stops. The greatest danger exists directly outside buildings, at exits, and alongside exterior walls. Ground movement during an earthquake is seldom the direct cause of death or injury. Most earthquake-related casualties result from collapsing walls, flying glass, and falling objects.
TRAPPED UNDER DEBRIS
• Do not light a match.
• Do not move about or kick up dust.
• Cover your mouth with a handkerchief or clothing.
• Tap on a pipe or wall so rescuers can locate you. Use a whistle if one is available. Shout only as a last resort. Shouting can cause you to inhale dangerous amounts of dust.
AFTER THE QUAKE
• Check for injuries, attend to injuries if needed, help ensure the safety of people around you.
• Check for damage. If your building is badly damaged you should leave it until it has been inspected by a safety professional.
• If you smell or hear a gas leak, get everyone outside and open windows and doors. If you can do it safely, turn off the gas at the meter. Report the leak to the gas company and fire department. Do not use any electrical appliances because a tiny spark could ignite the gas.
• If the power is out, unplug major appliances to prevent possible damage when the power is turned back on. If you see sparks, frayed wires, or smell hot insulation turn off electricity at the main fuse box or breaker. If you will have to step in water to turn off the electricity you should call a professional to turn it off for you.
The UAE’s expanding array of towering and bizarrely shaped buildings requires ever more extraordinary measures to keep them clean. Burj Khalifa, Dubai Height 828 metres, Emaar’s Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world.
Window cleaning reaches for new heights in the United Arab Emirates: Dangling on ropes 150 metres in the air in the desert heat, six young men are systematically washing down the 12,500 glass panes that clad the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Company's (Adnec) striking Capital Gate centre. Not a job for anyone with a fear of heights, the precipitous descent involves clinging to the underside of the world's steepest man-made tower using specially designed suction cups. Meanwhile, a team at the bottom of the tower has the less terrifying task of hosing down the lower floors from a moving platform.
It takes the team 30 days to wash the entire building (pictured below). And the moment they finish they have to start again. "We have to use a variety of techniques to clean our buildings, from rope access to boom systems, gantry systems, cradles and spraying with high-pressure hoses," says Alain El Tawil, the managing director of Grako, the company in charge of cleaning the tower, which leans at an angle of 18 degrees off vertical. It is also responsible for keeping the Burj Khalifa gleaming as well as a host of other oddly shaped and difficult to clean edifices.
The Capital Gate tower has gondolas built into the design to clean it's exterior.
With some of the world's tallest and most bizarre buildings, the Middle East has become a study in the art of the possible. For window cleaners, it's becoming more and more of a challenge to keep up. "Each company wants to build something different," says Mr El Tawil. "And that means making their buildings bigger and more complicated. Over the last eight years we have seen the company grow by 100 per cent each year in terms of staff numbers and we always have to keep recruiting in order to meet the demand."
Mr El Tawil's firm is not the only one challenged by the growth of bizarre building design. The struggle to maintain such structures is a problem faced throughout the construction process. "As tall buildings grow more sophisticated, systems to maintain them are increasingly addressed in the initial designs. Architects need to determine how workers will handle issues, where materials will be stored and how crews can move around the building without affecting tenants," says Kevin Brass, the public affairs manager at the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a think tank based in Chicago. "In buildings, space is always at a premium. Anything that takes up rentable space slices in to the economics of a building. As buildings grow taller, the designers spend an extraordinary amount of time determining where to locate the mechanical apparatus," he says.
Capital Gate, Adnec headquarters, Abu Dhabi- Height 160 metres Known as Abu Dhabi’s “leaning tower”, this 53,100-square-metre building leans four times as steeply as the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. Although the building has sets of gondolas built into the design to clean its exterior, Grako’s Alain El Tawil says abseilers are used instead because the unusual building’s lean makes it hard for ordinary machinery to reach the windows. Abseilers can also work in bigger teams, making the cleaning process quicker. To reach the underside, each window cleaner must first descend on a rope then use suction pads to overcome gravity and get to those hard-to-clean surfaces. The bottom of the building is cleaned using a device on wheels with a mechanically raised and lowered platform and high-pressure jets of water.
The trend is big business for Theo van der Linde, the operations manager for CoxGomyl, a company that specialises in installing the gondolas used to clean many tall buildings. As a rule of thumb, the more complicated and bizarrely shaped the building, the more work for specialists such as Mr van der Linde. "We work from the start with the architects who will be doing the overall design of the building and then assist them to ensure that the building maintenance units can reach all areas of the building to do cleaning or maintenance on the facade," he says. "Our specialist design team then design the gondolas according to the geometry of the specific building. The actual cleaning process is conventional using water, detergent and a applicator with the window wiper to remove the access water, the same as what they will do when they clean your car windows at the filling station, except that it is a few hundred meters above ground level. Whoever is going inside the cradle needs to have an aptitude for heights."
Aldar headquarters building, Abu Dhabi - Height 110 metres
The world’s first and only circular tower, Aldar’s 23-storey, 666,000 square feet head-office building requires some of the most complicated and advanced cleaning and maintenance equipment in the world to scale it. “The building shape is quite interesting here as it is round in the one plane and oval if you look at it from the side,” says Cox Gomyl’s Theo van der Linde. “The BMU [building maintenance unit] was designed to cover the whole building, therefore it can travel all the way around the building from one side to the other side in order to offer access to all the facade. “This BMU has three cradles to carry out the cleaning of the facade. We have two cradles on either [circular] side of the building. Therefore, two teams can work simultaneously.”
Facilities management companies, too, say the job is getting more demanding as the shapes and sizes of buildings become ever more complicated. "We use a number of techniques to carry out facade and roof cleaning, including abseiling or rope access, man-lift equipment, suspended platforms and, finally, cleaning from the ground with a water-fed pole system," says Mark Cooke, the general manager of business operations in the Middle East at the facilities management company UGL. "It depends on the type of buildings and the possible accessibility for facade cleaners to conduct their cleaning. Each building is treated individually, which includes a risk assessment and a safe work method statement."
So how much does all this cost? Mr El Tawil says an average tall building can cost anything between Dh30,000 (US$8,167) and Dh60,000 per cleaning. A large part of that relates to the access requirements and the skill sets, training and the certification required in carrying out the cleaning, says Mr Cooke. Labour costs and the level of safety standards adhered to are also important. Window cleaners and their managers can earn anything between Dh1,500 and Dh25,000 a month.
Aspire Zone, Doha Sports City, Qatar - Height 300 metres for the tower, making it the country’s tallest The futuristic tower, which makes up the centrepiece of the 250-hectare Aspire Zone, was designed to resemble a torch during the 2006 Asian Games. It also has a special video screen woven into a wire mesh measuring more than 1,000 square metres. The rest of the complex includes a mosque, sports dome and football stadium. The Australian company UGL is charged with facilities management at the site, which requires cleaning from ground level using a telescopic pole and abseiling down the tower to clean the facade by hand. “We need to complete six cleaning cycles per year and each cycle comprises of 60 calendar days with a team of six facade-cleaning specialists,” says Mark Cooke, UGL’s general manager for business operations in the Middle East.
Why We Build: the story of storeys, getting ever taller. The past few years have seen the development of a certain sport among western writers in gently mocking Dubai. Astronomical construction figures are laughed at, outrageous designs ridiculed and architecture intellectuals pretend to be vexed about what Dubai might represent as a model for the cities of the future. Readers are invited to shake their heads at the state of affairs at the Burj Khalifa, a building that boasts an Armani Hotel and the world's highest restaurant but needs sewage trucks parked at its base to take away the waste. Read more..
From the many skyscrapers of JBR and the flamboyant Palm Jumeirah to the elegance of the Burj Al Arab and the colossal Burj Khalifa, Dubai has a wealth of imposing structures.
Burj Khalifa, Dubai Height 828 metres, Emaar’s Burj Khalifa is the
tallest building in the world. The Burj’s complicated shape makes it one
of the most challenging buildings a window cleaner is ever likely to
face. Designed to incorporate traditional Islamic patterns into a
tri-petalled flower resembling a desert rose, the problem for window
cleaners is to get around the glass curves in order to clean. The
building is cleaned using both abseilers and cleaners standing on
elevated gondolas. CoxGomyl has set up 18 gondolas to maintain the
building including the highest building maintenance unit in the world
working at a height of 715 metres. Three sets of machines – stationed at
levels 40, 73 and 109 – are mounted on horizontal tracks, which means
they can travel across the facade.
Safety fears for high-rise cleaners (ABU DHABI): The case of a worker injured when he fell while washing windows has underscored the need for better safety regulations following a spate of deaths, experts warned. The cleaner was in a maintenance cradle near the mezzanine level of the Ministry of Economy building on Hamdan Street at 12.30am on Sunday when he fell to the ground. Hariff Kallungal, 49, from India, who saw the incident, said the steel basket that held the man also collapsed. “This cradle fell down, and this man was on top of the cradle,” Mr Kallungal said. He said he was bleeding from the back of his head and could not talk because of pain.
The man, who was not strapped into a safety harness, was taken to Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) for treatment. “He fell five metres and received a laceration to his scalp,” Dr Murray Van Dyke, the chairman of SKMC’s emergency ward, said. “He was seen in this emergency department, worked up thoroughly, he had sutures placed in his laceration and he was released in good condition.” While it was not a serious accident, “it certainly was a potentially serious injury”, Dr Van Dyke said.
Statistically, about 50 per cent of people who fall from four-storey heights are killed, he said, and few will survive a seven-storey fall. Of the 85,000 patients admitted in a year at SKMC’s emergency ward, Dr Van Dyke estimated about five per cent of those cases were work-related, excluding motor vehicle accidents. Patients injured from falls were relatively “infrequent”, he said, but he pointed out the hospital would count only survivors. “We may have a bias here because if the person has fallen from a high enough point, they will have died. We only see the people who are actually making it to the emergency department, so we can’t infer that the number is the overall number.”
Unless problems such as inadequate training and equipment are addressed, the dangers persist. Four men died in a similar incident in June, plunging six storeys outside Sharjah’s Ansar Mall. The workers had been erecting a sign when their maintenance cradle snapped in half. None were wearing safety harnesses. In July, three workers died in Sharjah when the scaffolding holding them came apart. Falls from heights have been identified as a “top priority” issue in occupational death in the emirate, according to Dr Jens Thomsen, the head of occupational and environmental health at the Health Authority-Abu Dhabi (HAAD).
Last year, HAAD logged 108 fatal workplace injuries, of which 28 deaths (or 26 per cent) were due to falls from heights. In 2008, there were 66 deaths on the job, with 26 of those (or 39 per cent) resulting from falls from a height. “If you put the numbers together of falls from heights and deaths from falling objects, this is by far the leading cause of occupational injury in Abu Dhabi emirate,” Dr Thomsen said yesterday. HAAD recently printed 5,000 copies of an occupational hazards booklet for distribution to company owners. Among the topics covered was falls and falling objects, Dr Thomsen said. “It’s quite obvious that the safety standards are not followed everywhere as they should be, and especially with these window-cleaning fatalities. I’ve noticed there were a couple of reports recently in Sharjah with similar fatalities.”
Such accidents are far too preventable to be so common, said Dr Fikri Abu-Zidan, a professor of medicine at UAE University, who last year co-authored a study on occupational injuries in Al Ain. “More than half – 51 per cent – of work-related injuries are from falls from heights, mainly more than three metres high, which by definition is high-energy trauma,” he said. “Everyone [working from heights] should have those slings on at work. The equipment should be better and training should be better.” Rather than waiting for near-misses to occur, prevention means early detection of problems, Dr Abu-Zidan said. “It’s not enough to just bring in labourers. They should have an educational period with training for safety and surveillance for accidents.”
In the UAE University report, which used 2008 data collected from Al Ain’s trauma registry, the most common cause of injury on work sites was falls from heights (51 per cent), followed by injuries from falling objects (15 per cent). Dr Michal Grivna, another co-author on the study, said regulations should be put in place “not only regarding safety on construction sites, but also for window cleaners working at heights”. He also said that awareness about the risks of heatstroke was an important consideration. “The weather and heat-related stress is a challenge if it’s someone standing outside on a platform washing windows,” Dr Grivna said. “They could get dizzy outside working many hours in the sunshine.”
Dr Grivna noted that unlike in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi does not have limitations on building heights, meaning workers who fall from the capital’s high-rises might be less likely to survive. Laws unheeded are no laws at all.
THOUGH they are famous for rescuing damsels in distress and saving the world, cartoon superheroes - Spiderman, Batman and Superman - appeared live at the Movenpick Tower and Suites building yesterday on an entirely different mission. Scaling the 26-storey building were more than 10 Asian workers of Spider Style Tower Cleaning Company (SSTC), dressed as the superheroes, in a bid to perform the heroic deed of cleaning the hotel’s glass windows. According to SSTC operation manager/partner Ahmad Harake, the idea of using the cartoon characters was to show the kind of tasks the company takes up. “SSTC maintains the cleanliness of windows, mirrors and other glass surfaces by cleaning exterior window panes and interior panes if desired. Often thought of as a simple, unskilled job, high-rise window cleaning requires mastery of difficult techniques that sets the amateurs apart from the experts,” he said. On safety measures and to why the cleaners were only being supported by a rope, he reassured that the rope was a special one widely in use in Asia and Europe for such daunting tasks. The hotel’s general manager, Philippe Bonnot, said the hotel just wanted to be part of the fun by engaging SSTC.“We have informed our in-house guests to have no worries if they see a strangely clad figure outside their bedroom window – it is only a Batman trying to brighten their view,” he said.
AMITABH JHA, DOHA. Ever seen Spiderman, or Batman, or for that matter, Superman in person and in action? You could have on Sunday if you had been in West Bay Area here between 11.10 am and 11.55 am. Awe-struck passers by near the Movenpick Tower and Suits who saw the unique sight halted in their tracks for a moment. It was only after some effort that they could figure out that these were normal men dressed up in costumes of the superheroes. In fact, there were five Spidermans, five Batmans and as many Supermans, they noticed before moving on with a chuckle. That was what the show planned by the 350-room hotel’s general manager Philippe Bonnot and executed by the personnel of Spider Style Tower Cleaning WLL set out to achieve.“Negotiations were extensive but after exhaustive discussions we eventually persuaded a number of our favourite superheroes to pay us a visit in Doha, once they have finished saving the world of course,” said Bonnot initially refusing to get out of the make believe world. On return to ‘real time’ he said, “These are the men who in course of their normal work brighten the day of our guests by cleaning the windows of the hotel. This time they are out to bring a smile on the face of residents and guests alike.” But safe fun, rides on the back of considerable groundwork and time. It took two months for the idea to flower into a spectacle. The costumes were shipped from United Kingdoms and the cleaning personnel given thorough training and equipped suitably. “Each chord from which the cleaning superheroes hang is designed to withstand a load of three tonnes,” said Ahmad Harake Operation Manager of Spider Style Tower Cleaning. But how did the men feel coming down from the 26-floor building swinging in the gusty 16 knots per hour wind lashing the cityscape? “It is like this every day. The only unusual thing is that we had costumes of superheroes,” said Babu Kaji one of the 15 superheroes who hails from Nepal.
“Our company is new here in Doha, around five months, and we’ve hired all these Nepalese climbers and trained them here,” said Ahmad Harake, operations manager and partner of the Spider Style Tower Cleaning Company. “We have only asked 15 climbers/cleaners to do the work today, but we have already employed around 40 in our company. Five are French and the rest are Nepalese,” said Harake. According to Philippe Bonnot, Movenpick general manager, the idea of having the window cleaners dress up in costumes was to brighten the guests’ day. “We all need our windows cleaned, so why not inject some fun into it as well? If we can brighten the guests’ day while going about our daily routine, then we are happy,” said Bonnot. According to Harake, their company is now in the middle of hiring female climbers from the Philippines who will be joining their company soon. .
Start-up firm to make cleaning high-rises easy: Doha, Qatar• When a window washer working on a building on Grand Hamad Street fell to his death in front of a would-be entrepreneur, it got him and his four business partners thinking. The end result is KlearGreen, a high-technology start-up formed to develop robotic facade and window cleaning systems for high-rise buildings. Doha's rising skyline meant an instant business idea. And lessons were learned from participating in Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar's Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Programme. What the quintet plans to do is bring in machinery to do the job of window washing in tall buildings. The machinery can be used not only on buildings with glass facades but other surfaces as well. Moreover, the machinery can be programmed to wash every nook and cranny of a building's exterior by tailoring it to the contours of the building. It also eliminates the need for labour and the job is completed much faster. Buildings these days are no longer square blocks, with Bidda Towers and the Tornado Tower here being examples of the changes taking place in building design. Shams Hasan, one of the partners in the venture, told The Peninsula: "In our group, we have real estate expertise, Qatar expertise and technology expertise. We felt the window washing business had a serious need and we had to solve it. Our technology is different. Building physics change and mechanics become difficult." As one goes higher up a building, there is a 'sway' factor, for example. Workers are also unwilling to kiss the clouds as buildings rise higher and higher. Those who wash windows on high-rises are paid around three times as much as a regular worker and they have to be provided insurance, all of which adds to the costs of a company. It can take a crew of up to eight to work on a single building. Another partner, Sami Al Shammari, said: "With this device we can clean faster and more securely. It is also about speed, and a building can be washed more times." Under normal circumstances, it can take up to a month to finish washing a building. Hasan said: "We looked at it from a logical perspective and not as window cleaners. We feel this is the right place to get things moving and we have the right expertise." He said the group was hopeful of setting up an office at the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP). KlearGreen would perhaps be an ideal tenant as it exemplifies the spirit of entrepreneurship and research which the QSTP is keen to promote. Best of all, it is a local enterprise. The new machines could also have uses in fighting fires. "You will have noted lately there have been several fires in the new high-rises. But how high could the fire department's ladders go? So, with the new machines, firefighting could conceivably be another option for their use," said Hasan. The machines will have three versions. The first will be human-operated, the second semi-automated and the third fully-automated. To have the machines built — KlearGreen is tying up with Telerobot of Italy — $600,000 will be required. Hasan and Al Shammari are confident KlearGreen will receive the funding needed.
"After Qatar, we may even look at places like Dubai and then the US and Europe," the partners said.
