Job Site Visit

Tim Here- 

Yesterday we went on a job site visit of King Saud University's women's campus. It is a $3.2 billion project, and the size of this job is mindboggling! They're basically building all of Purdue all at once. Anyway, below are some of the things we saw...

Worker hard at work on top of platform.

Workers

Entrance way to student lounge area.

Beautiful spiral staircase.

King Abdulla's Welcoming Sign

Auditorium

200,000 ton chillers! Not even Hulk can lift these things.

Huge student lounge area. How much will
it cost to air condition a room of this size?

third day in Saudi-mike

Yesterday was awesome.... like every day here!  We had a safety presentation to start off our day with a seasoned veteran (Jamie) who had been directing safety on construction sites for 30 plus years.  Needless to say the presentation was very helpful and fun. Then, shortly after the presentation we toured the site of King Saud's girls campus. The size of the site was unbelievable and incredible. They really are doing amazing things here in Saudi. After (SCHOOL) was done we had the honor of eating dinner at the American embassy. I would like to tell you all about it but I would have to (silence) you if I did, just kidding, the embassy was like a fancy country club. With people in all type of different career fields there having fun listening to American music videos and eating steaks. That was about it for day three, met a lot of people.

PICTURES

all packed up

somewhere near frankfurt

Airplane shenanigans

duel wielding jack hammers

first day of school

FTR introduction meeting

Our welcome sign!

Initial Thoughts

Tim Here-

We've finally gotten our trip underway, and Day 1 of this highly anticipated trip was even better than I had expected. FTR International of Nevada has been treating us like kings, and they are providing everything that we could want and more! For me, the most exciting part thus far has been arriving at our apartment after flying all the way from Chicago. I wished we would have gotten it on video, but it was hilarious the way all of us were running around the apartment checking out all the rooms. It was like a race for who could examine the entire apartment the fasted. We would be in different rooms and upon hearing someone squeal in delight we all rushed to see what that person had discovered. Eventually we started claiming rooms. Adam and I engaged into an epic Rock Paper Scissors battle for the best room in the apartment. I ended up losing the ferocious battle, and had to settle for the most secluded room in the apartment. Haha jokes on him though, because the modem is right next to my room, and none of the other rooms get a very strong WiFi signal. Plus my room is gigantic, and I have an enormous bed... Not too shabby if you ask me. Below I have attached a picture of my room. We should be uploading a video of the entire apartment later today so stay tuned!

Day 1 in Saudi Arabia

Matt Swavey here.  We're nearing the end of our first full day in Riyadh and it's been fun learning experience so far.  We arrived around 8 pm last night and ate dinner at a local restaurant. I can now understand why the group last year gained weight  because the food is so good that it's hard to stop eating.  Today we went to the King Saud University for women site and were introduced to the FTR International Staff.  They were all very nice and welcoming and gave us an overview of the site and a few other sites they are working on in The Kingdom.  The KSU site is the biggest site I've every personally been on; it's a 340 acre site with over 14000 workers.  If today was an indication of how the rest of our trip will be than it will be a great experience unlike any other.

Day 2 in Saudi-mike

Today we spent the morning getting introduced to FTR.  I do have to mention a morning incident first. The hot water in Saudi is obtained by solar heaters on the roof of each building. I woke up to take a shower and quickly learned as I was boiled alive that the cold water is comparable to our hot water and the hot water is comparable to boiling water on an oven burner!  At least I was wide eyed for the morning orientation. A quick summary of the introduction is as follows; we reviewed King Saud’s university. The area of construction is a girls’ campus project that will accommodate 28,000 women. FTR’s role is to give advice (CAREFULLY) to achieve high standards of design and engineering. We will be touring this site as well as An Aviation flight academy and the grand Mosque located in King Abdullah’s financial district.

P.S. – I didn’t want to write a novel, if you have any questions feel free to email me and I will answer. mmattern@purdue.edu

day 1 in Saudi- mike

      As we made our minivan drive from Lafayette to O’Hare airport in Chicago my mind began to wonder about the journey ahead. My first journey would be the 15 hours of air plane travel. I have to admit I fell asleep before takeoff to Frankfurt Germany. When I woke up I looked out the window and saw an Island below me.  I thought “could that be Ireland or some Island just off the European cost? We are so close” I thought. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I looked at the flight kiosk to find that we had only traveled for an hour and we were over the east coast of North America! I had seven hours left to sit with my knees pressing the seat in front of me and my head bobbling around as I tried to sleep.  However, our transfer flight was a given from heaven! From Frankfurt to Riyadh our airplane had booked only ¼ of the seats with people.  So, Adam, Nazir, Matt, and myself laid down over the middle rows of the plain (5 seats) It was fantastic.  To conclude, we arrived in Riyadh at about dinner time (noon time at home). An FTR driver transported us to our apartment that is amazing and then FTR took us out to dinner in an authentic native restaurant.

-mike