The newest update video published by Saudi Arabian state project delivery body Neom reveals rapid progress on the ambitious The Line city project, with millions of cubic meters of earth and water being moved ‘around the clock.’
Part of the wider Neom giga-project, The Line is a proposed linear city that is currently under construction in the northwest of Saudi Arabia. Its futuristic design includes two 500m tall skyscrapers that form 170 km long walls enclosing a self-sustaining city with zero net emissions. Claiming it to be the world’s biggest earthworks operation, around 260 excavators and 2,000 trucks are working around the clock to move 2M.m3 of earth per week. To put that into context, they are excavating so much sand that it can fill 800 Olympic-sized pools every week.
“The energy within Saudi Arabia at the moment is incredible,” The Line’s chief development officer Denis Hickey says in the video. “I think the plan that is laid out in the 2030 vision statement by His Royal Highness, is really clear and I think it’s galvanised everybody within the Kingdom.”
Neom has also claimed that the world’s largest piling operation is in progress on The Line. “We have done a lot of the foundation work literally and figuratively,” Hickey adds. Middle East business magazine MEED reported last year that 4,500 piles had been driven as part of foundation works on The Line. The report went on to claim that work had reached a peak of more than 60 piles a day. If everything goes according to plan, the first phase of The Line will be completed by 2030.
