These Featured Projects have been selected from many of Astral's recently-completed and ongoing projects to provide a glimpse of the diversity of facilities Astral builds and the diversity of its clients.
Beleli Training Facility
Astral is perhaps the only company in Pakistan that specializes in design-build projects. We have completed more than a dozen design-build projects in the past 5 years, more than any other construction company in Pakistan. This has given Astral the special skill of design coordination prior to commencing construction, as well as the ability to identify design problems preemptively even in construction-only projects.
The Beleli Training Facility was a £10 million (Rupees 1.45 billion) design-build contract awarded to Astral after intense competition with some of the biggest names in the country. Under a bi-party agreement with the Government of Pakistan (GoP), the British Government agreed to build a very large facility for the Frontier Corps Balochistan on behalf of the GoP. They contracted Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), UK, for this project. KBR in turn gave a complete design and build contract to Astral. Astral subcontracted Halcrow Pakistan for the design of the facility along with Habib FIda Ali as the architects and others, while keeping the design coordination lead within the company. The construction was performed by Astral with minimal additional subcontracting.
The facility is spread over a large area and the scope included complete site infrastructure works (water, electricity, gas, roads, pavements etc.), nine buildings, firing range, AT/FP measures, landscaping and complete turnkey delivery. The project was unique in that it was on a highly-secure military facility and was built to extremely strict UK quality and HSE standards under the supervision of highly-qualified British engineers. The project also included a number of military-related facilities such as an armory, an international-standard firing range and complete set of AT/FP measures.
The Beleli Training Facility is probably the first major facility built in Quetta to the standards and under the provision of the then-recently-established Pakistan Building Code – Seismic Provisions 2007, Seismic Zone 4.