Cranes Across Dubai Skyline

Some people have described Dubai, a city on the Persian Gulf, as a giant construction site.

Cranes fill the skyline and line the roadways, spoiling the view from almost any window.

According to building analysts, Dubai has become the fastest-growing city in the world; it also boasts the largest inventory of building cranes.

All this building is due to those who have made fortunes on oil, as they use their profits to build luxury establishments in this liberal and cosmopolitan city.

As the city grows across the desert, there is no telling how many building cranes are currently in use there.

You will find thousands more mobile and crawler cranes (cranes on wheels or on tracks) located in Dubai. And much more is needed to complete its projects. Manufacturers are unable to keep up with the demand for new cranes, and very few are available on the second-hand market.

According to Construction Week magazine, crane prices have soared 30 percent lately, and with the two primary European manufacturers being backlogged, the Gulf countries are turning to Italian and Chinese cranes.

It is not only cranes which are in short supply. Bulldozers, excavators, pile drivers and other machinery are also in short supply due to building booms that are occurring simultaneously in Qatar, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, the UAW capital. Laborers and engineers are in high demand, and the costs of raw materials, such as concrete, glass, steel and aluminum, are skyrocketing. All this is causing building prices to escalate.

It was estimated in the 2006 Gulf Construction Yearbook that $4 billion is spent every week on construction projects in the six Gulf Arab nations.