Masdar project team faces fee cuts in bid to save £3bn

The developer behind Masdar, the sustainable city being built in Abu Dhabi, is renegotiating contracts with consultants, contractors and suppliers.

The client, also called Masdar, is aiming to take advantage of lower fees and materials prices to cut the overall cost of the city from $23-24bn to below $20bn (£13.8bn).

The news follows rumours, denied by Masdar, that tenders had been delayed for some commercial elements of the zero-carbon project, which was masterplanned by Foster + Partners.

Masara Al Ameri, urban planning department manager for Masdar, said: “With the market going down, we’d like to see the cost of the city go below $20bn. We are renegotiating with contractors and consultants to get back to market prices.”

She declined to say how much the client aimed to cut from consultants and contractors’ fees but said the project would aim to save between 30% and 40% on the solar panels that will be fitted on every building.

Aldar, Abu Dhabi’s biggest developer, recently asked consultants to cut their fees by 20%. Fellow developer Sorouh said it would be asking for similar cuts.

There have been complaints of procurement delays at Masdar in recent weeks.

One UK architect said: “The conference and hotel parts of the scheme went out in November and we had two interviews two or three months ago. They said they would be in touch in a couple of weeks but we never heard anything.”

Masdar said the design and tendering process was “on schedule”. Al Ameri said: “Why would we scale it back? We have government support and we have the team.”

She added that phase two of the university, the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, had been brought forward a year. Phase one opens in September.

She said Masdar’s four-star hotel would open to tenders soon.