Dubai Hills Mall

Prominently situated between Downtown Dubai and Dubai Marina, the Dubai Hills Mall is the flagship retail destination of a 2,700-acre master plan development within Mohammed Bin Rashid City.

The design philosophy for the mall is the creation of a neighbourhood retail street experience, creating a preferred gathering place for friends and family, with the ambition to generate a feeling of community within an interactive social space.

As the project manager, JLL fostered a highly collaborative approach on this project. We managed a large international multi-discipline design consultant and engaged several specialist sub-consultancies to bring sector expertise to the design process. The introduction of the Main Contractor early in the design process, via a Target Price contract mechanism, further contributed to the collaborative ‘one team’ approach to deliver this project. 

We managed an extremely aggressive programme that necessitated the procurement of two early works contractors for the piling and enabling works, as well as the early engagement of a Main Contractor to input into the design process.

Furthermore, we implemented a split permit strategy to enable structural works to progress ahead of the final detailed design and segregated the building via movement joints into four distinct structural permits and underground service applications. This required extensive coordination with the Statutory Authorities. The robust change management process put in place by our team alleviated the impact of some major design changes in the later stages of the design process without impacting the permitting strategy or construction progress.

To further complicate things, the outbreak of COVID-19 caused an initial project suspension of construction works and disruptions in the supply chain.

With a gross leasable area of 2,000,000 sqft spread over two floors, Dubai Hills Mall opened its doors to the public on 17 February 2022. It features over 600 retail and F&B outlets, as well as family entertainment centres including Roxy Cinemas and the state-of-the art Adventure Park with indoor rollercoaster, The Storm Coaster, and over 7,000 parking spaces.