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Leighton Holdings Quarterly Update 2nd Quarter 10 Leighton Asia's City of Dreams takes shape Leighton Asia and John Holland, in joint venture with China State Construction Engineering, are undertaking a management contract for the construction of the City of Dreams in Macau. The development comprises: four deluxe towers of between 28 and 35 storeys, providing hotel accommodation ranging from four stars up; serviced apartments; an underwater-themed casino; a luxury retail arcade; international food and beverage outlets, and a performance hall with seating for around 2000 people. Roger Barnett, Project Director of the City of Dreams talks about the project. "The City of Dreams project in Macau is a US$2bn+ fast track construction project. The Leighton Asia, China State and John Holland joint venture (LCJ) client is the Melco PBL Development Company which is an organisation formed by Laurence Ho's Melco gaming industry and James Packer's Crown Limited. "We are constructing over 600,000m 2 of floor area within the development, which is the equivalent of about 55 soccer pitches. The progress here is quite remarkable. We poured the first blinding concrete on the ground on 17 January 2007. Since then we have poured 225,000m 3 of concrete. That's about a hundred trucks every day since then. "40,000 tonnes of structural steel have been fabricated over in mainland China in a factory that we established for this project. We have broken all records for fabricating steel in Guangzhou Province. There's another 40,000 tonnes of steel reinforcing in the concrete structure. We also have dedicated factories in China manufacturing the façade and other construction components. "The client is undertaking the design of the City of Dreams. Design and statutory approvals are currently controlling progress on the project, so we are doing all we can to help its advancement. We have recently combined all our staff into a 600 man office on the northern edge of the site to streamline the coordination process. "Macau used to be a very sleepy little town where people, such as myself, used to bring our families for a quiet weekend. Now of course it has completely changed, it has overtaken Las Vegas in the gambling stakes. It is like Las Vegas on steroids. It is absolutely booming. Having said that there is still some of the old Macau here. There's the old red district (so called for the dyes from the garment factories,) the old narrow streets and there is Coloane, which is a quiet beach area. It is a unique blend of the modern casinos and the little restaurants. It is quite a pleasant place to live and work.
Leighton Holdings Quarterly Update 2nd Quarter 11 Roger Barnett, Project Director "About 50% of our 2,500 workforce come from Hong Kong. The remainder are Macanese and mainland Chinese labour. This creates challenges because the Macanese have never been exposed to the level of safety standards that our Hong Kong labour works to and for the mainlanders this is a completely different ball game. "We are developing a program with Mandarin speaking safety officers to communicate the need for good safety behaviours. We have also introduced the Leighton SafeX "reward for safety" system into this project and it's proving very successful with the Macanese and the mainlanders, who haven't encountered this approach before. It's really quite exciting to see how it changes their attitude. "The casino projects in Macau have created a lot of jobs for the local community, certainly in the gaming and catering areas. We are quite well known in the community and we need to keep high standards of behaviour and communication here. We also need to be conscious that we are guests in somebody else's country. "We continually interface with the university and the international school next to us. We have improved their facilities and assist them wherever we can. "Environmentally we maintain the standards of Leighton Asia and have all the usual procedures that go with it. "Our staff are a combination of secondees from Leighton Asia, mainly out of Hong Kong, John Holland out of New South Wales and China State of course. We are working very well together. I never cease to be amazed at the way the young Australians fit into this very different environment. It really suits their culture and background. "We do introduce technology into the job wherever we can, but the Chinese traditionally like to do things their own way. A lot of our Australians, certainly the site managers, bring in their way of doing things. Our big balloon lights are an example. I know these were used on the Lane Cove Tunnel project in New South Wales, but they have never been used in these parts of the world before. They raised a lot of interest and because we are working here seven days a week, 24 hours a day, we have to have good lighting and they are proving very effective. "Another initiative we are employing is the aluminium pan formwork system or the slab construction on the hotels, rather than the traditional Chinese knock down timber formwork. This is proving very successful. "A primary measure of success on this project is turnover. Quite simply, the more we spend the better the progress we are making. Every month, the first thing we look out for is how much turnover we have achieved and the figures are quite staggering. We believe at some stage we are going to hit the HK$1bn per month mark during our peak periods. We haven't got there yet but we are determined to. "City of Dreams is a fantastic project to be involved with. It is an enormous challenge, we have a great team of people here and they're all completely dedicated to getting this job over the line," enthused Mr Barnett.
Page 1 and 2: update quarterly February 2008 Qtr0
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