Mataf is the area surrounding the Kaaba, the center of the holiest mosque in Islam, located within the Grand Mosque of Mecca. It is where the Tawaf, the counterclockwise circumambulation around the Kaaba, takes place.

The Mataf expansion is a large-scale project aimed at adding 1,300,000 sqm to the existing 400,000 sqm of space. The renovation will feature a new basement and three additional floors, increasing capacity for hundreds of thousands of additional worshippers.

For this significant project, Dextra Middle East has been involved in supplying rebar couplers and anchor solutions.

Mega Columns

For the mega columns, Dextra provided contractors with a solution to connect cages vertically while accommodating potential misalignment. This was achieved using Bartec caging assemblies, which allow for a misalignment adjustment equivalent to one bar diameter.

In addition to enabling reconnection, the Bartec caging assemblies were also used to temporarily lock the large column template (visible in red in photos) to ensure the correct setup of column reinforcement.

Mega Column Footing

Dextra Bartec Headed Bars, which use the same type of threads as the couplers, were also installed at the footing of the mega columns to address reinforcement congestion.

The anchors, compact and easy to install, can be set on bars during the final stage of reinforcement installation. In this project, the anchors were installed from the top of the raft onto the vertical bars. More than 100,000 Headed Bars were used in this type of application, appearing as X-shaped reinforcement at the column footing.

Column-to-Beam Connections

For more standard applications, Bartec couplers were also used to create horizontal connections between the columns and beams.