Original subtitles

In this episode... Without a doubt, we are breaking new ground.

We are pushing the bounds of engineering.

A new city district rises from the Arabian Sea, crowned by the world's

biggest observation wheel.

Things that 10 or 20 years ago, people would have felt it's just not possible.

It is possible now.

It's really very exciting.

And the pioneering historic innovations.

Oh, man.

This is amazing.

What a beautiful, impressive, and powerful bit of Kim.

That make the impossible possible.

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, is

home to some of the most innovative engineering on the planet.

where each new build must push the boundaries of what's possible in order

stand out from the crowd.

One man who knows what it takes to make a mark on this ever -evolving city is

Mohammed Al Mullah.

Dubai has been able to prove that there is no limit to your freedom of thinking.

It's important that we keep pushing the boundaries of engineering across every

project we do.

Dubai known to be bringing the best in class in various aspects, from the

tallest towers to the biggest airport.

I'm sure Dubai in the next few months will be another mega project that will

announced.

Once you have a dream, people will get together and just help you to achieve

that dream.

Desert City is determined to keep creating the most spectacular structures

the world.

But Dubai is quickly running out of its coveted waterfront locations.

So engineers now have to think outside the box.

The coastline in Dubai has a limited stretch.

You have certain type of tourists who look for beach, so we must make sure we

have enough beaches. We must extend the coastline. It's very important for our

survival to move forward in a very competitive landscape.

Creating land where there once was none is a massive undertaking.

And engineers in Dubai aren't just creating land.

They're thinking much bigger and creating a whole new

island.

This is Blue Waters.

Constructed from 28 .3 million cubic feet of rock and 141

.3 million cubic feet of sand,

Blue Waters Island covers an area larger than 12 New York City blocks and will

be populated by a combination of residential towers, shops, and five

hotels.

Its crowning glory is the Ein Dubai, an observation wheel that stands an

unprecedented 820 feet tall.

When you arrive, you'll see the wheel.

It will be a moment, a wow moment.

I'm sure everybody's jaw will literally drop and they'll just stand there in

awe.

But this multi -million dollar project poses huge engineering challenges.

Is it possible to create land where there is nothing but sea?

Blue Waters Island is a very challenging project for us because that plant is

not suitable for island construction.

How do you make it strong enough to support tower blocks and a

Loose down, it's very limited in the load that it can support.

Typically, maybe 10 to 20 percent of what you would expect on traditionally

formed ground.

And how do you build a wheel that towers over every other wheel ever

constructed?

These cables have to be very strong, but if we put all the tension in the

bottom, we would just buckle the rim.

Blue Water Island, we keep on pushing our boundaries.

This is the most challenging engineering project happening in the world at the

moment.

It's going to take a top -notch team of engineers to pull it all off.

Okay, let's go.

Civil engineer Cone Sweers is overseeing island construction.

It's a good day for surveying today, I think.

To find the perfect location, the team needs to uncover what lies beneath.

We start island with what we call an in -survey.

where we map the sea floor, where the future island will be, and that's

basically our starting point.

Sonar and GPS allow Kohn and the team to precisely map the bottom of the sea.

You can see the depth coming up on the screen.

Yeah, perfect.

So here now it is 7 meters, eh? Yeah, exactly. It's between 7 to 9.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Based on that, we can calculate up till the design level of the island.

Building blue waters will require a staggering 141 million cubic feet of

And despite being located in the world's fifth largest desert, finding the right

sand is far from easy.

Desert sand is not suitable for building an island.

The sand particles of desert sand are very round, and this is not good for the

interlocking between the individual rains.

It's like you have a jar with all of the same marbles.

Engineers have to use sand from below the sea.

We use marine sand. Marine sand is very suitable for construction works because

it is much more angular.

And marine sand has a lot of particles of different gradings.

And it is coarser, so it settles much more easier.

But with the marine sand sites 30 nautical miles away, engineers are

giant challenge.

Instead of bringing sand by road transport to the location, we have to

other means to bring the material from sea to the location of the island.

There is a solution across the world.

Miami Beach in Florida.

Today it's one of the most glamorous and prestigious coastal resorts on the

planet.

But just over a hundred years ago, it was a desolate, swampy wilderness.

Its success is all thanks to the vision of one man, Carl Fisher.

He came up with a genius plan to convert this marshland into what he called the

prettiest little city in the world.

Mechanical engineer Dan Dickrell is on a mission to find out just how he did it.

Oh man, this is amazing.

What a unique experience. Probably the airboat of the Everglades.

Yeah, this is the natural Florida.

In the early 20th century, Miami's coast was a very different place than it is

today.

Yeah, we're going to go a little bit more up ahead.

There's a good spot right up there.

Perfect, perfect, perfect.

OK, so this is what Florida used to look like. The land that Fisher bought would

have been very, very close to this.

Oh, it's super soft. There's mud and silt in there.

From an engineering perspective, there's nothing that you can build a solid

foundation upon.

But despite the makeup of the South Florida swamps, Fisher was undeterred.

He believed a solution could be found through engineering.

So this vessel is a hydraulically powered cutter suction dredger.

It is the same type of thing that Fisher believed he could use to realize his

vision.

Now I'm going to give these controls a go and see how it functions.

On the end of this large boom, we can see gnarly looking cutter wheel.

I can move it up and down, I can move it left, and I can move it right.

If I turn this knob here, we transmit power to the cutter head. So now this

cutter head is going to rotate.

As I drop it down, I'm going to engage the bottom. Now what's going to end up

happening is I'm going to start removing material.

And as that material is removed, it's being transported through that orange

hose. That's a discharge hose.

That discharge hose is connected to a hydraulic pump, which sucks the water

solid material through and transports it a long distance away to trucks or back

on shore.

For Fisher, cutter suction dredging offered the perfect solution.

The trees and shrubs could be cut away.

and the dredged materials used to create an island, just like engineers in Dubai

want to do.

Between 1914 and 1928, Fisher's dream began to take shape,

much to the amazement of those who had doubted his plans.

And this is the end result of Fisher's ambition.

Miami Beach.

So standing here looking out from an engineer's perspective, it's an

idea to imagine Fisher took a swampy wasteland and turned it into one of the

premier beaches of the world.

Talk about making the impossible possible.

Back in Dubai.

Engineers are pushing Fisher's idea even further.

For Blue Waters Island, they'll need to reclaim over 140 million cubic feet of

sand from the depths of the Arabian Gulf.

You can compare that to 2 ,000 truckloads of sand each day, seven days

for five to six months long.

So we mobilize dredges from around the world.

To achieve this Herculean feat.

The team will use a supersized version of the vessels that were once used to

transform the Florida swamps.

And they will also need to put some modern -day technology to the test in

to turn this island dream into a reality.

In the Arabian Gulf, off the coast of Dubai, an incredible project is

Engineers are collecting what will be the foundation of Blue Waters, a

completely man -made island built from millions of tons of sand from the ocean

floor.

To collect all of this sand, they will use the same vessels that created Miami

Beach in the early 20th century, only much bigger.

These dredges are harder material that we encountered.

Then we used trailing suction hopper dredges.

Basically, it is a vessel with a big vacuum cleaner on the side.

They suck up a mixture of sand and water from the sea bottom.

Gathering the sand is one thing, but engineers now face another challenge.

Once the shape of the island has been outlined using rock and protective

textiles, they'll need a way to deposit such enormous volumes of sand.

In the first phase of building an island, when there's still sufficient

depth, then we discharge the material by opening the bottom doors of the vessel.

But as the island grows, engineers must turn to other ways of depositing the

sand. One is what we call rainbowing.

You will see a rainbow of water sand flying through the air straight to the

location where you want it to be.

We use that technique at Blue Waters quite a lot.

When the mighty vessel can't get close to the island, engineers have another

trick up their sleeve.

You see on the bow of the vessel this round cylinder construction.

From there it will connect to a floating pipeline and then it will pump the

material through the floating pipeline.

We can pump if necessary a few kilometers away into a series of shore

in the location where we want the material to be.

These kind of vessels are crucial.

They basically do the hard work.

We come and there's nothing and we leave and there is an island.

So yeah, it's tremendous.

But before they can begin to construct this landmark, engineers face another

obstacle.

We inherit a site that contains very, very loose material and you get a lot of

movement and that can cause a lot of damage to a building and can make it

unsafe.

They'll need to transform a giant pile of sand into a foundation strong enough

to support an entire city district.

The scale of the building can often be really daunting.

Is it buildable?

Can it be built?

Has it been done before?

David Murray is the leading engineer involved in this seemingly impossible

transformation.

We inherit a site that contains very, very loose material.

It's really due to the nature of how the island has been born.

The sand is pumped and sprayed into position, so there's no real compaction

process.

And what this means is that the sand has got a very, very low strength.

When a structure is built on top of that sand in its loose state, it's prone to

substantial deformation and settlement, because as the weight of the building

pushes it down, you get a lot of movement, and that can cause a lot of

a building and can make it unsafe.

So it needs further treatment to provide extra strength and stiffness.

The answer to this problem just might lie with the innovators of the past.

Andrew Steele is in the British Midlands, putting his back into some

-fashioned manual labor.

That's a nice big pile of sand.

Let's try flattening it out.

Here goes nothing.

In the early days of road building, heavy cast iron rollers were a typical

for compacting foundations.

Well, this really isn't a very practical method.

Making it a slow and expensive business.

As the importance of a modernized road network grew, So did the need to get it

built quickly.

You can see why they wanted to try and find a more efficient, faster and

way of flattening out sand than this, because this is ridiculous.

Luckily for Andrew... Now this is more like it.

In 1867... Two engineers came up with a solution.

This is an absolutely incredible machine.

Look at her roll.

Pioneered by Thomas Aveling and Richard Porter, the steamroller marked a

watershed moment for heavy industry.

And this 125 -year -old example is one of the oldest surviving rollers on the

planet.

This thing's just a beast.

Look at the size of these cast -iron wheels and the power of the scene that

we're using to get this thing rumbling down the road.

I wish it had power steering, though.

Weighing in at an earth -shaking 11 tons.

This monster machine is a powerhouse when it comes to compaction.

Right, let's see if this thing can do any better.

Much more fun for a beautiful, impressive and powerful bit of kit.

Well, that is much better than my shoddy attempt.

Not only did we manage to do it in a single pass and cover a lot more area

I managed manually, but if you get down close, you can see the sand is much more

compact and firm than I could manage with that little manual roller.

Looking at this, it's obvious why that machine was such a hit.

But there was an unintended side effect to these early steamrollers, one that

could be important to the engineers of Blue Waters Island.

In Dubai, engineers have collected and deposited massive amounts of sand to

create blue waters. But before this man -made island can be built on, the loose

sand will need to be compacted to ensure a strong foundation.

It turns out that the earliest version of the steamroller, built over a century

ago, might have exactly what the team in Dubai needs.

Because they were often driven in a very low gear with high revs. And engineers

started to notice that this front roller here would be vibrating.

Now, this actually has a benefit when it comes to compacting a road surface.

And so I'm going to show you a little demo to try and explain why that is.

So what I've got here is a plastic cup, a little bit of breakfast cereal here,

and I'm just going to pour the breakfast cereal in.

There we go.

And now to simulate that vibration, I've just got a bit more of a modern tool,

this electric drill. So if I just apply a little bit of vibration, oh wow, that

works very quickly. You can see those little grains of rice in there are just

moving around pretty much at random.

What that means is they're settling down to their optimal positions.

As the vibrations cause the grains to move, they begin to settle closer

together. Closing up the air pockets and improving compaction.

Having noticed this, engineers building modern versions of this steamroller

would actually intentionally build in that vibration to try and take advantage

of this effect.

The introduction of the steamroller went on to revolutionize road building in

Britain and beyond.

This beautiful machine was fundamental to the past and still continues to shape

our future.

Engineers in Dubai are using an arsenal of heavyweight machinery to shore up

their new island.

Among them is a descendant of Aveling and Porter's traditional steamroller.

So this is a 27 -ton vibrating roller.

Now you can feel actually the effect on the ground. It's shaking beneath our

feet quite dramatically.

As it rolls, it also vibrates. So it has a very good compacting effect.

You can really feel it now, and it gives you an idea of how much shaking and

vibration of the ground is happening.

This machine is rolled over the surface of the sand, and what it does is it

densifies the sand to give a very, very strong capping layer.

Vibrating rollers can compress the top six feet, but the challenge here goes

much deeper.

To fully compact the millions of cubic feet of the island's sand, engineers

an extra tactic.

In order to overcome the various risks associated with loose soils, we

a ground improvement process, which in this part of the world has become very

successful, and it's a process called vibrocompaction.

Okay, stick it up.

It's a technique made possible thanks to even more super -sized machinery.

So we're now looking at a typical poker assembly.

The majority of this will be underground during the compaction process.

You can just get a sense of the scale of this when you look up.

We're talking about four or five -story building in terms of the depth of

improvement that goes below the ground.

Vibro compaction begins with the poker penetrating the ground to the required

depth.

As the poker vibrates, it's raised up in stages, causing the sand to compact

around it.

The crater that develops on the surface is backfilled, then re -leveled and

finished using the vibrating roller.

The great thing about this is it's a very quick way of compacting the ground,

what we call an accelerated compaction.

We don't wait for hundreds of thousands of years, we do it instantly.

But with plans for multiple towers and a massive megastructure, engineers will

need to further bolster Blue Water's island.

If you are building a very lightweight building, two to three stories, in

general, yes, you can build off -ground like this.

But when we're talking about taller structures and megastructures, This

on its own won't have sufficient capacity to support the ground. It does

contribution, but not the entire support to the structure.

Huge concrete piles will help to underpin the biggest builds.

Those piles have to be anchored deep down into the rock.

They don't just sit on the surface of the rock. They actually extend 10, 15,

metres down into the rock.

And there's a friction between the pile and the rock which stops it from pulling

out.

Now, with the ground compacted and foundations deployed, engineers can

begin to build.

Residential towers, luxury hotels, and retail park all

rise up to take their place in the city's crowded skyline.

But the biggest challenge of all still remains.

How to construct the planet's largest observation wheel.

Off the coast of Dubai, engineers have successfully laid the foundation for

Waters Island, with several luxury hotels, shops, and restaurants in place.

They're now gearing up for their final challenge, the Ain Dubai, the world's

tallest Ferris wheel.

It's like Piccadilly Circus around here.

Can we go around here, guys?

Yeah.

Project manager Pierre Seide is the man overseeing this record -breaking build.

There are obviously other observation wheels around the world, but we're about

50 % bigger than the current biggest.

Once complete, the Ain Dubai is set to rise more than 820 feet above the

coast. It will be almost double the size of the giant London Eye, making it

comfortably the largest wheel on the planet. And it will set a world record

some believe will never be broken.

48 specially designed pods made from aviation -grade glass will carry 1 ,900

passengers.

But supporting this massive structure requires a framework on an equally epic

scale.

So the main components of the structure, we have four legs, 900 tons each, 125

meters long.

With the streets of Dubai packed with traffic, transporting this giant

by road would be impossible.

Really, transportation was only going to ever be by water, so because we're on

an island, we bring them in by barge.

Each giant leg weighs more than five 747 jumbo jets.

But on a build of this size, the problems just keep getting bigger.

The heaviest part is the hub and spindle, which connects all the legs

and carries the 6 ,500 ton weight of the wheel.

Raising this nearly 2 ,000 ton component to the required 413 foot height calls

for more problem solving.

So we can put a block on that top platform, pick it up and lower it on,

otherwise you can't get a crane to it.

The only way to conquer this supersized challenge is to use supersized

technology.

We lift them off with two of the largest cranes in the world.

3 ,000 ton capacity units.

Working at about 98 % of their safe working capacity.

You've got to go like a hair to the left.

The biggest tandem lift and certainly the highest tandem lift that's been done

before.

Engineer Darren Brook has special clearance to climb through one of the

legs to the spindle itself.

We've just entered leg one.

The legs are inclined at about 16 degrees.

So this lift also then travels up the profile of the leg. It has to be

designed to meet that angle.

So where we are now is in the middle of the spindle.

The spindle is approximately 135 meters in the air.

As you can see, it's a vast space, six meters in diameter.

It connects the four legs.

This space is big enough to fit two buses in.

Running around the outside of that, and we can just sort of see through these

hatches here, is the hub.

The gigantic rotating wheel will eventually be attached to this unit.

The hub is actually the moving part and actually contains all of the bearings

that then run over the spindle.

The hub itself, that's really transferring all of that load into the

then to the leg and then back down to the ground and the foundation.

It's an impressive achievement.

But on a project of this size, there's always another challenge that lies ahead

for engineers.

With a wheel of this scale, I think the biggest challenge is... trying to

foresee the unexpected before it happens.

To achieve this monumental undertaking, Piers and his team will be pushed to the

limits. It's a huge task and a huge challenge to build something and design

something of this size.

Blue waters in Dubai.

A brand new man -made island risen from the sea.

Complete with residential towers, luxury hotels, and retail shops.

It's soon to be dominated by a colossal structure.

The world's largest observation wheel.

With the enormous legs, hub, and spindle in position, leading engineer Pierce

Seide and his team must now solve a new problem.

How to construct the wheel itself.

The rim is built in eight sections, lifted off the barge,

welded together, launched with a special push -pull system.

supported by massive steel wagon wheel -like spokes spanning the radius.

Engineers weld one section of rim to another, push and pull it around, then

weld on the next section until the circumference is complete,

revealing the fully assembled wheel for the very first time.

I think it is a particularly beautiful wheel.

We've had lots of things for the designers and the directors to overcome,

we've managed it.

But in order to complete this world -class wheel, one final challenge stands

the engineer's way.

The wheel must support itself without the aid of the eight large steel -framed

spokes.

It was part of the reef that this had to be aesthetically beautiful, had to take

it the next step beyond some of the other wheels to create a very light

structure.

So we need to keep the weight down, but keep the strength.

To keep the wheel strong, stable, and yet still lightweight, engineers will

to draw on an innovation from the past.

This is pretty cool to be here and just can't wait to get up.

Mechanical engineer Melanie Tott is in Vienna to take a unique look at an epic

engineering feat.

Let's go.

The Wiener Riesenrad.

The oldest ferris wheel on earth.

This is so amazing to see the whole structure so close.

And we can even see the wheel moving.

At almost 213 feet, it was once the largest.

I'm touching one piece of history here.

This wheel was actually built 120 years ago.

This is really amazing.

But it wasn't the first.

In 1893, American engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr.

designed the first -ever fully circular large -scale observation wheel.

The Wiener Riesenrod was built on similar principles to Ferris'

wheel. When George Ferris came up with his idea, people thought he's crazy

because no one could believe that something, that thing, that slander,

carry its own weight.

They did not even think that such a wheel can be built.

Ferris was determined to prove them wrong. But just like the engineers in

he faced a huge problem.

Ferris needed to find a lightweight design that can carry its own weight to

realize this construction.

George Ferris used a principle that is called pre -tensioning, and this is a

principle that allows such thin constructions to carry much more loads

without the pre -tensioning.

It's the same principle as the wheel of a bike.

Old, small fairground wheels used large, heavy beams to support their outer rim,

like a wagon wheel.

But Ferris realized that, like the spokes on a modern bicycle, He could use

relatively thin wire or cable to make his wheel strong.

These cables would have virtually no strength in compression.

But as long as they were tightly and evenly tensioned, they would be more

up to the job.

It's fascinating to see actually how the cables are mounted to the spindle.

To truly experience Ferris' innovation for herself.

Melanie is going to take it for a spin.

Danke.

It's so smooth.

George Ferris actually reinvented the wheel.

He brought lightweight design to new limits.

Due to his achievements, it's now possible that we have this kind of huge

observation wheel.

More than a century later, engineers in Dubai will take Ferris' idea to even

greater height.

On Blue Waters Island, Engineers are attempting a record -breaking feat.

Construction has begun on the Ain Dubai, the world's largest observation wheel.

The concept was to create something that was amazing and just awe -inspiring.

To create a structure that did look lightweight, but keep the strength.

By using pre -tensioning, the wheel's temporary rim supports can be removed,

leaving only the slender cables to carry the load.

And to do that, we've used some very high -strength steel.

And these cables can take over 300 tons of load.

Despite using super -strength cables, engineers still rely on basic

You can actually liken this wheel to a bike wheel. You can't actually tension

all of them at once, at one area, because it will just buckle the rim.

And it's exactly the same challenge we face here on a wheel of this diameter.

Huge hydraulic jacks tension 24 cables at a time.

The wheel is then turned, and the process continues until all 192 cables

are tightened.

At 100 % tension, each cable can hold more than 600 ,000 pounds, the

of 50 African elephants.

It's another example of the innovative solutions that make up this

groundbreaking wheel.

A structure so massive that it dwarfs the competition.

So we're 135 meters in the air and we're looking out over a beautiful Dubai

landscape.

We get a fantastic view from up here.

We're not just making the largest wheel.

We're going up by orders of magnitude in terms of the largest wheel.

It's a phenomenal project.

It's a phenomenal undertaking.

It's a feat that all involved can be proud of.

In my opinion, this is the most challenging engineering project

world at the moment.

And personally, I've been very proud to be involved since the beginning.

By learning from the great pioneers of the past,

adapting,

upscaling, and overcoming huge challenges, It always pushes me to the

boundaries. The nice thing about it is that you have created something that

be there for the next 50 or 100 years.

And that's something that gives incredible satisfaction.

Engineers have continued to push the boundary.

In a city where the sky truly is the limit, they've succeeded in making the

impossible.

We went with the assumption to break every norm, every parameter, till we

it doesn't work. And guess what? Working with the best in the world, we've been

able to again put another mega project up and running. And we are proud of that

achievement, another achievement for Dubai.

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