'At the moment we are doing fund-raising for the new campus and preparing the tender documents,' says Hussain el-Sharqawi, AUC vice-president for new campus development. 'Most of our academic facilities will move to the new site, but we are not planning to expand our number of students by anything more than very small increments, from 5,000 to 5,500.'

Following the award of a £E 26 million ($5.6 million) contract last year, the local Samcrete Egypthas been preparing the substructures, earthworks and main service tunnels on the new site, which is located in the planned New Cairo Development in Katameya, between Heliopolis and Maadi. AUC has acquired a 260-acre plot in New Cairo, which is being developed by the government as a predominantly middle- to high-income residential community, with schools, cultural facilities, commercial enterprises, government agencies, hotels and parkland. The 46,000-acre development will be connected to the city centre by the planned third line of the Cairo metro (MEED 17:1:03).

The project is scheduled for completion in mid-2006, allowing students to relocate to the new campus at the start of the 2006/07 academic year. The consultants are a US team of Dober, Lidsky, Craig & Associates (DLCA), Research Facilities Designand the Kreisberg Group. DLCA developed the masterplan for the new campus with architects Boston Design Collaborative Internationaland Carol R Johnson & Associates, both of the US, local landscape designers Sites Internationaland structural engineers Weidlinger Associatesand Syska & Hennesy, also of the US.