The Largest IRATA Rope Access Company In The World

Burj Al Arab Sky View Bar Facade Inspection by Megarme.

Hanging around with Megarme: You're a project manager nearing completion on one of the region's tallest buildings but there is a tile missing, a bulb which needs replacing, or a window pane broken. Sending site workers to repair the problem isn't an option, but the job still needs doing. Who do you call?

Megarme's team worked feverishly in the lead up to the grand opening of the Dubai Metro.

Rope access specialists Megarme are a 300 strong company with teams of skilled technicians whose expertise ranges across a number of disciplines. Having worked on projects such as Dubai's Atlantis Hotel and Burj Al Arab; Bahrain World Trade Centre; oil rigs and even the world famous Burj Khalifa, they really do reach the parts nobody else can reach. "We are known as the access specialists," says head of business development Daniel Gill (pictured below).

On a cloudy day in Dubai, from the top of the current tallest building in the World, the Burj Khalifa.

"Where there are challenging areas of buildings; over hangs, under hangs, decking systems, where traditional access cannot reach, we tend to provide the solutions. Because we are manpower orientated we can arrive on site and be mobilised in a matter of minutes. It's all nonconventional access," he explains, adding: "There are cleaning companies out there who have rope access capabilities, but we are a rope access company with cleaning capabilities." "We cover a huge array of trades and disciplines that just happen to be done from a rope," Gill adds, with some of the more bizarre projects including changing the bulb in the aircraft warning light on the top of the 240 metre Bahrain World Trade Centre.

MEGARME: Burj Dubai Fireworks Install

Projects

Megarme's team was called in at the final stages of construction at the 414 metre Princess Tower, Dubai Marina, to  install the final, and highest, panels; inaccessible because the building is square with a step-in to the dome. When the Atlantis Hotel was damaged by fire, Gill coordinated a team within days and spent five weeks on site. Recalling the project as a personal favourite, Megarme painted the complete archway and facade, provided structural assistance and also repaired areas water damaged by fire fighters.

Most jobs require rope skills as well as plumbing, electrical and welding abilities.

For the Yas Marina Hotel in Abu Dhabi, Megarme installed lights and glass panels, working around the clock to meet another tight deadline. Gill recalls his other career highlights as including the - relatively low - Dubai Metro. "We're the largest IRATA rope access company in the world; we're the first port of call when it comes to problem solving, so that usually leaves us in good stead for more of the predominant projects out here. At some stage we're involved," Gill says.

Daniel Gill at the top of Burj Khalifa.

Sense of danger

Statistically, working in the industrial rope access business is safer than travelling to site. Strictly governed by the International Rope Access Trade Association (IRATA), each member of the team is secured with two ropes, ready to either ascend or descend to the required point on the building, rig, tower or bridge. The highest point on the structure is accessed by lift, then stairs or ladder, with harnesses and attachment points used to reach the final rigging point. The most senior person on site -- who must hold the IRATA level three qualification -- is then responsible for securing the ropes the team will work from.

A member of Megarme staff abseils down the side of the Burj Dubai. The rope-access firm fitted the lights to the world's tallest tower.

Gill says he would much rather prefer to be attached to Megarme's ropes than a cradle -- where the user is dependent upon how the equipment has been stored and maintained by the third party -- adding that it is the simplicity of the equipment, which makes it so safe. "I always enjoyed the extreme side of life, but I never intended getting into industrial rope access when I left school," Gill admits.

Billy Harkin says Megarme has won a health, safety and environment award for its work at Dubai International Airport.

Harkin

With a construction background, Gill says he met Megarme managing director Billy Harkin (pictured) by chance, having arrived in Dubai to realise that he was over-qualified to work onsite but under-qualified to work off. "My background is construction so I came to Dubai with a slightly false impression of what to expect. I just saw 80% of the world's cranes and a construction project on every corner, but when I arrived I found I actually fit slap bang into a void that had zero requirement out here." Having now "inadvertently discovered his passion", Gill says he can't imagine doing anything else.

A Megarme abseiler moves down the side of the Burj Khalifa above the lagoon.

Racing towards the sun

Despite vast experience defying gravity on some of the world's most iconic structures, Gill says he "certainly got his kicks" working on the very top of the Burj Khalifa. "We were at 828 metres; you don't get much higher," he says, recalling how he even stood on the highest point of the spire. Having spent more than two months scaling the record breaking tower, Gill worked with the team tasked with cleaning the entire facade and installing some of the fireworks for the official launch in January 2010 -- a deadline that was looking impossible to meet until Megarme arrived.

Visa rules in the Gulf often make it easier to keep track of the current skills and qualifications of rope access technicians.

"When Tom Cruise did his abseil on the tower, a lot of online forums and blogs took what he did in a negative light. They highlighted the fact that guys do this day in and day out in the sweltering heat for nowhere near as much recognition," Gill says. "I know how hard our guys work and it is incredibly hard work; mentally and physically draining. They are recognised within the company, but I'm just pleased to be involved in any project we find solutions for."

For more blogs on Megarme, see here, here & here. Below: from the top!

Breaking the Pane Barrier in the Middle East

ABU DHABI: The world’s tallest skyscraper. The world’s highest hotel. The world’s most-inclined tower. To those on the ground, the UAE’s ambitious architecture evokes marvel and amazement. But for those responsible for maintaining them, these extreme buildings instead pose a lofty problem: how on earth do you keep them clean? The answer, in short: ditch the window cleaner’s traditional steel basket. As structural engineers dream up ever more oddly shaped towers with awkward, hard-to-reach angles, professional abseilers, experts at scaling surfaces using ropes, are being called upon to maintain the gleaming facades.
Atop the windy peak of the Burj al Arab, more than 300m up, cars are ants and Dubai’s roads appear as chalk lines to Benj Cortez, the rope access manager for the Dubai-based abseiling company Megarme. “Sometimes we are higher than the clouds,” said Mr Cortez. “If you are on top of the pinnacle, you will see the world, and everything is so small.” Mr Cortez, 41, from the Philippines, has scaled more than 30 of the country’s best-known buildings in his 15 years of service. Strapped into a harness suspended by steel cables, he has sprayed down the mast of the Burj al Arab, repainted the Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht Club, replaced light bulbs on the Emirates Towers and rappelled from the Raffles Hotel’s 19-storey glass pyramid.



But although business is brisk, the anything-is-possible attitude of architects is testing Megarme’s 200 or so rope-access technicians. “We have the architects coming to us and saying, ‘this is what we want to build; can you tell us how to clean it?’” said Daniel Gill, the company’s civil projects manager. “In recent years, [the designs are] all getting more and more abstract.” Unlike traditional vertical structures, the new high-rises sprouting in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are inaccessible to maintenance workers, at least by a standard window-washing gondola. The structures include protruding lounges, curved surfaces, slopes, unprecedented heights, even a hollowed-out centre. “The way that the designs are going, it’s only getting worse,” Mr Gill said. Take, for instance, the planned 22-storey Opus by Omniyat Properties: “It looks like your standard square building, but then it’s like somebody’s taken a bazooka and blown a hole in the middle of it,” Mr Gill said.
Megarme is consulting with the Opus planners on an “anchorage concept”, whereby climbers can roam the cube’s exterior by latching on to sockets fixed to the cladding. A similar scheme has been developed for Abu Dhabi’s anticipated 160m Capital Gate tower, constructed to be “four times more crooked” than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The building, which is past the halfway point of its glazing, rotates with height and is meant to appear differently from all directions. Its 18-degree westward incline could have posed a logistical nightmare. “We had a long discussion with the client about strategies to clean the building,” said Tony Archibold, the project lead on the Capital Gate. “It became apparent that a standard building maintenance unit wouldn’t cover it.”
Instead, Megarme recommended fixing hidden “restraint points” to the 728 diamond-shaped panels making up the glass exterior. “So what happens is the abseiler goes down [and] he’s got a series of pins on the rope and he can just pin himself in,” Mr Archibold said. “He’s stitched to the surface of the glass. The pins act as guides to his rope and he has complete freedom of movement.” The building has roughly 47,000 square metres of glass, which will need washing about four times a year. In this case, Megarme has been involved since the early concept sketches, although the maintenance contract has not yet been awarded. “These shapes are becoming more and more problematic in the sense of how you clean them,” Mr Archibold acknowledged. “Buildings are pushing the boundaries, so abseiling is a new industry here in some ways.”
Megarme started in 1993, primarily to assist the offshore oil and gas sector with welding, painting, electrical work and inspections of rigs requiring rope access. It was not until the last seven years that civil projects began regularly seeking their expertise, said Billy Harkin, the company’s managing director. That sector now accounts for about a third of the firm’s business. “Dubai became what it became and then things really kicked off,” he said. “You look at the unique, high-profile buildings, and we’ve been heavily drawn into them. It’s quite lucrative work and it’s here on our doorstep.” The climbers earn more than their ground-based counterparts for their work, he added. “Let’s say we have an abseiler who’s a welder,” Mr Harkin said. “He would be paid double what he would be paid as a welder on the ground to be a welder on a rope. They’d double their trade by adding the rope-access skill.”



At present, a team of 80 climbers are suspended over Yas Island’s Marina Hotel to fit some 4,800 LED panels on an enormous display. Next week, another crew will hose down and squeegee windows on the “armadillo-shaped” stations for the Dubai Metro. “The projects get a little wacko, but nothing surprises us anymore,” Mr Harkin said. One memorable view, however, was 709m above ground on the Burj Dubai. Not long ago, Mr Harkin accompanied Mr Gill and the building’s senior project manager to the base of the building’s spire for a site inspection. “Put it this way: We were looking down on helicopters,” Mr Gill said. “We were staring down at the 58-storey Millennium Tower.” From that elevation, Mr Gill noted, abseilers would be required to shin up another 109m to clean the spire, which is unreachable by ordinary window-washing cradle.
Some brave soul will also need to replace the light bulb at the tip, and 21 aircraft warning lights and aesthetic filaments will have to be accessed by rope-works. The apex is said to sway about 1.5m in the wind. Megarme is confident it will win the Burj Dubai’s maintenance contract. The company’s safety record has been “impeccable”, he said, with no major injuries so far. All rope-access technicians are trained from scratch and hail mainly from India and the Philippines. A few are Bangladeshi. Roughly one-third come from Nepal. “We tend to take the Nepalese guys, given their mountainous backgrounds,” Mr Gill said. For protection from the sun, the technicians don shades and white “moon suits”. They also wear hydration packs supplying an electrolyte sport beverage. Morning jobs are conducted on the west façades of structures to minimise exposure to the sun. Such trade secrets will be the subject of a lecture next month in the UK, where Megarme has been invited to address the Industrial Rope Access Trade Association on their experience working with some of the most complex building designs on the planet under extreme conditions.
As for future projects, the company has its sights on the proposed US$13.6 billion (Dh50bn) Mile-High Tower in Jeddah. If constructed, the planned 1.6km building would be twice as tall as the Burj Dubai, taking extreme cleaning to new sky-piercing heights. Mr Gill is looking forward to it. “Nothing’s ever straightforward here, but I guess that’s the nature of our industry,” he mused. “We have to love the challenge.”