Construction of the multi-million dollar, luxury Ocean Keys apartment complex at Long Beach began this week. On Monday Informanté witnessed the historic laying of the first of 141 vertical, underground concrete pillars on which the building’s foundation will ultimately rest. This construction technique is also known as reverse piling and in the case of Ocean Keys these pillars were cast in a natural, solid bed of granite below the desert’s sand surface.

“We plan to complete all the pillars in just over a month from now,” the developer Günther Heimstädt told Informanté at the construction site on Monday, adding that the basement should be completed by mid-September. Construction of the twelve storey complex, which includes ground-floor business space, luxury apartments and penthouses, is anticipated to be concluded by October 2013.
The piling process starts with a powerful drill sinking holes of up to seven meters through the sand layers into the granite bedrock. Simultaneously removable casings are lowered into the hole. With the casing in place, steel reinforcement is lowered into the hole and then filled with reinforced concrete. The temporary casings are then removed and the pillar allowed to settle.
Coastal construction firm, QE Construction, will conduct the construction of the basement section of the building. The piling work is conducted by Stefanutti Stocks, a construction company with extensive experience in underwater construction. As far as could be established it is only the second time in the coast’s construction history that reverse piling as a construction technique to enforce a building’s foundations has been applied. The first time this technique was used locally was in the construction of the foundation of the recently commissioned Anixas power station in Walvis Bay.
Once completed Ocean Keys, at twelve storeys high, will officially become the highest building in Walvis Bay.