Property developer Nakheel is to award AED12bn ($3.2bn) worth of construction contracts on its Waterfront project in the next 12 months, accelerating development following four years of planning.

Located on Dubai’s final stretch of undeveloped coastline, next to the Abu Dhabi border, it is the largest real estate development in the emirate.

“In the next 12 months, AED12bn worth of contracts will be under way on key elements of the project’s infrastructure,” says Conrad Groen, development director for the Waterfront at Nakheel.

It is expected to involve tens of billions of dollars of investment and covers an area of about 130 square kilometres, on a series of artificial islands. When completed, the development will be able to house up to 1.5 million people.

The project was first launched in 2004 and has undergone a series of major design changes, which have meant the amount of construction to date has been limited.

“We are building a city, a place where people will spend their lives, so we are going to plan, plan and plan again to make sure we get it all right,” says Matt Joyce, managing director of the project at Nakheel.

“People are unbelievably impatient. It takes time to build a real city,” says Rem Koolhaa, founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the company that has prepared the development’s masterplan.

The awards planned for the next 12 months include contracts to build a road network with four interchanges, and 1,400 villas in the Veneto villa district. Tenders for both have been issued and contractors are expected to respond in the next month.

Nakheel recently awarded several key infrastructure contracts on the Waterfront project. South Korea’s Samsung Corporation has been awarded an estimated AED250m contract to build bridges in the Veneto area, and the local/UK Dutco Balfour Beatty has been selected for the estimated $40m quay wall, canal and bridge works in the same district.

Nakheel also says it is planning to build light rail and tram systems as part of its Waterfront scheme (MEED 4:2:08).

The local Emirates Road Contracting is already working on a civils package for sectors B and C in the Madinat Al-Arab high-rise district, while another local firm, Wade Adams Contracting, is installing infrastructure in the Badr and Veneto districts. The local Ghantoot Transport & General Contracting is doing the civils work for the Omran low-cost housing district.

The $100m Canal Cove dredging contract that was awarded to Belgium’s Jan de Nul in 2007 is now 60 per cent complete. It accounts for about a quarter of the 75-kilometre-long Arabian Canal that is being developed by Dubai-based developer Limitless, which will run through the Waterfront. The UK’s Mouchel Parkman is the consultant for the infrastructure works.

The mainland section of Dubai Waterfront is 17 kilometres long, from the Ghantoot area to Jebel Ali, and 15 kilometres wide, from the coast to Sheikh Zayed road. The four reclaimed islands extend 15 kilometres into the sea, 10 kilometres further than the Palm Jumeirah.