Venturing Into St. Kitts
As a St. Lucian based company Amarna has been privileged to be a part of the new growth St. Kitts & Nevis has been experiencing by acting as Civil and Structural Engineering Consultants to many of the country’s new projects. Thanks to its Citizenship By Investment (CBI) program, St. Kitts’ construction industry has experienced a major boom with new developments of million dollar resort residences, commercial buildings and apartment complexes. One of the first major real estate projects to take advantage of this CBI program has been the KOI brand with the construction of its administrative office, a 12,000 s.f. commercial building in close proximity to the Robert L. Bradshaw Airport.
Our involvement with KOI’s projects has been a test of our expertise and professionalism. Our first endeavour with the brand was as the Structural Engineers for their Administrative Office. This building was particularly unique because of its curved elevation, open floor plan and elevated ground floor level. Traditional elements such as reinforcement concrete and masonry were used in the design of the 2-storey building, which is now the home of the brand’s commercial hub for its future beachfront hotel aptly named KOI Resort & Residences in Half Moon Bay.
Following our design work for the administrative office, Amarna was further contracted to undertake the civil and structural design work for the proposed site of the five diamond KOI Resort & Residences. Our services for the 15-acre property included design elements for infrastructure works and structural design works for the many multi- and single leveled structures that are located throughout the property. Although faced with many challenges with this phase of the project, including the fact that the land was originally a swamp, we were able to accrue the Client millions in savings by not only designing some of the taller building structures utilizing a post-tensioning system as opposed to a more traditional reinforcement design, but by redesigning the pile foundation system using 67% fewer piles than was specified in the original drawings.
KOI Resort & Residences is still under construction, and we are still a part of this project. Currently we have one of our staff members residing in St. Kitts acting as a Site Supervisor to the project, with home-based Engineering support. We envision a long and prosperous relationship with KOI and hope to continue sharing more with you about our work on this and other projects as time passes.