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The 828m-tall supertall skyscraper topped out in 2009, surpassing Taiwan’s 508m-tall Taipei 101, which itself held the title for just five years.

But could the Burj Khalifa’s time at the top be drawing to a close?

Saudi Arabian development firm the Jeddah Economic Company looks set to appoint a new contractor to take over the construction of the Jeddah Tower, which until recently had been mothballed since 2018.

Designed by US-based architecture firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill architecture, the skyscraper is set to stretch a kilometre (3,281 ft) into the sky, in a shape said to be inspired by new palm fronds.

A digital render of how the Jeddah Tower would look once completed (Image: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture)

Several companies are in the mix for the construction contract, according to a recent report by , including a joint venture between local company El Seif Engineering & Contracting and China’s biggest construction company, China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), which was responsible for building Africa’s tallest building, the 394m-tall Iconic Tower in Egypt’s new administrative capital.

Other companies in the running are Lebanon’s Consolidated Contractors Company (CCC) and Kuwait’s Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al Kharafi & Sons, according to reports.

Whichever company ultimately wins the work, they will take over construction of a building that is already around 30% complete.

Work originally started in 2013, with the Jeddah-based Saudi Binladin Group serving as the main contractor.

But construction was suspended five years later when Bakr bin Laden, the company’s then-chairman and largest shareholder, was arrested in 2017 amid a corruption crackdown conducted by a new royal anti-corruption committee and headed by the then-new Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In 2018, while under arrest, Bakr bin Laden transferred his stake in the company to the government of Saudi Arabia, before his release in 2019.

Developer the Jeddah Economic Company also found itself linked to the Crown Prince’s anti-corruption sweep. The company is owned by a consortium that it still believed to include Kingdom Holding Company.

A dating back to 2012 announcing that a final license had been granted to build the tower claimed that Kingdom Holding Company’s chairman Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud was the “driving force” behind the project. But he too was arrested in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s anti-corruption sweep, although he was freed in January 2018.

The situation led to uncertainty over whether the project would ever be completed. That become even less clear amid the covid-19 pandemic, and after it emerged that there are plans to build a 2km-high tower in Riyadh, reportedly backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and being designed by Foster + Partners, that would dwarf even the Jeddah Tower.

Nonetheless, plans to complete the Jeddah Tower (previously also known as the Kingdom Tower) in Saudi Arabia’s second-most-populated city, which borders the Red Sea, appear to be in motion. Jeddah Economic Company has reportedly exercised its right to appoint a new contractor, having given Saudi Binladin Group five years to re-engage. It has also reportedly confirmed that it will announce a contractor on the project imminently. 

Construction Briefing has contacted the developer but has not received a response.

The structure of the tower

A building as tall as the Jeddah Tower requires a huge foundation. According to a , the footprint of the building’s foundation raft, which has already been constructed, is 3,720 square metres (40,042 square feet). Connected to the raft is a system of 226 1.5m-diameter and 44 1.8m-diameter cast-in-place piles, with depths ranging from 45m at the wings to 105m at the centre of the tower.

An aerial view of the Jeddah Tower before construction work halted in 2018 (Image: Jeddah Economic Company)

The building itself is made up of three wings and a central core, built out of reinforced concrete and steel. Eventually, it will feature an all-glass façade.

The tower structure will be made up of three core walls that form a triangular centre of the tower. Connected to the core are the wing walls that extend along the long axis of the wings, and short fin walls perpendicular to the wing walls.

Images of the construction site clearly show the triangular core of the building as well as the three wings that emerge from it, and a considerable number of floors have already been built.

However, even once a new contractor is appointed to continue construction, it’s expected to take another four to five years until it is complete. That means the Burj Khalifa’s reign as the tallest building in the world should last almost two decades, if not more.

The Jeddah Tower as it appeared in 2021, following a long pause in construction works (Image: Omarnizar05 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)