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Royal Samui Beach Online

showing the earth moving trucks and two interviews...

Royal Samui Beach Online I arrived at the construction site in Koh Samui carrying my video equipment and ready to shoot the video report I had named, after the development, Royal Samui Beach.
The main object of this video report was to capture on video tape the progress, if any, that was being made on the construction site and interview key personnel. My video consisted of showing the earth moving trucks and two interviews, one with the Director of Sales, John Brun and one with the Project Manager, Roly Parthezius, who spoke at length about how the site was going to be “eco friendly” and would be constructed to a very high standard. As there was little else I could show and there was no one else representing the development company in Koh Samui I added some personal touches of my own.
The end result of all this was quite positive. I showed the video to the Hong Kong owners and they seemed relieved that something was happening at last after such a long delay in starting.

Royal Samui Beach Online | Video Report 1.0


see the sea everywhere

what a difference two years made

This is a transcript of the interview with Roly Parthezius, which I filmed for my first video report in March 2004. T/C 00.01.34.21 Tape 1 AR: So Roly explain to me what is your job on this development site Royal Samui Beach? RP: Thank you Adrian. My role on this project is the Project and Construction Manager which covers a multitude of disciplines and we are in our process of managing the job where we look at all the various stages that we pass through which is our pre-construction phase which we have just finished. And we are now into earth works and we move through. What I mainly try to do is identify problems before they happen and find solutions for them. I have a very competent staff here on site. I have got two ex-patriots who are both qualified in the construction industry, they will be here full time in our site office which the contractor has provided for us. I myself are based in Bali but I will be coming here for one week every four weeks to spend time on the site to conduct the monthly site meetings and I also will be liaising very solidly between my clients, Royal Developments International, and the contractor and my site staff. T/C 00.02.45.14 CLICK TO: LISTEN WATCH AR: Great. I can see already that work has begun, which is going to be good news for villa owners...At what stage are we at know? RP: Well we at the pre-construction, we’ve just reached the end of pre-construction. In pre-construction we have two very important elements that we’ve got to get right before we can start. The first one is that we have to have all the information so we can clearly identify the boundaries of the property. Because this is such a compact site we have had to extract information from the land office which gives us the precise points of the land. Once we have that, then we know the confines within which we can work. Secondly, you then have to complete your working drawings and put this into the local authorities for your building permit. The building permit we got just before Christmas and, today, I have just received this document which is the final information on the boundary measurements which we have now.

Koh Samui | swimming pool view

As we speak the contractor will already have his surveyors going round the site checking that the pegs are exactly as per the document and then as of tomorrow we start serious construction which means we know precisely where we’re working. That’s what we call pre-construction. And in the construction phase, which is happening now our first task is to do the earth works which means we move the high spots to the low spots, we compact it, and we get the site ready for the commencement of the concrete footings, putting in temporary roads, setting up cranes and setting up a plant to make the concrete and all these sorts of things. T/C 00.04.26.03 CLICK TO: LISTEN WATCH

Koh Samui | swimming pool view

first luxury villa resort

prepare the site for villa construction

AR: So all the heavy work is taking place now? RP: Well, this is the heavy part of the construction It doesn’t, um, it doesn’t show much but there is a lot of underground work as well. We start burying cables and pipes that are needed to be under the ground instead of filling the site and digging a hole and putting it back so we plan all that now. You don’t see a lot, but when we start the construction of the floors and the columns that’s when the visible stage arrives and that’s probably going to be within the month. T/C 00.04.55.09 CLICK TO: LISTEN WATCH AR: Great. Now I understand...um that, this is supposed to be an ecology or eco friendly development can you elaborate? RP: I can do...um Royal Developments International are concerned as developers about the global environment and one of the briefs that we had at the beginning, when we started the design process, was to introduce as many eco friendly procedures and processes that we can. And we’ve taken this on board. One of them in particular which is our concern for water here was thrust upon us to find a better solution. Koh Samui has a limited amount of ground water and we currently are just running off a bore which for three months of the year is dry so we’ve taken the option, which is a fairly expensive exercise on behalf of the client, we are going to be just drawing sea water and running it through a reverse osmosis machine which will give pure clean, totally drinkable water and in unlimited quantity, obviously. And this will be stored in a very large tank at the top of the hill which we can see behind us and from there we gravity feed the whole of the site, so the couple of the eco things here is, that apart from taking the ground water, which is valuable to the natural environment as well as other users, um we are taking water from the ocean. We’re pumping it by one pump to the top of the hill and then gravity feeding it so we’re not using hundreds of pumps which use more electricity, which make noise, etc., etc., so there’s a very subtle...A lot of the ecological things are very subtle. We’re also going to be doing a full sewage treatment plant so that we don’t have any effluent or any nasty chemicals or whatever that can come from the villas, finding its way into the oceans or elsewhere and the treatment plant, which is down the bottom of the hill, so everything gravity feeds down into the sewage treatment plant. The waste water, which we call grey water, which comes from that, is free of all, you know, all nasties and bugs whatever, you wouldn’t want to drink it, but we will then pipe that back around the site so that we can water the gardens and so forth.

resorts around Asia

French Cambodian construction company

Um, we’re looking at probably maybe trying to get a solar system working for our back-up electricity for some of the areas, um that’s yet to be finally decided because the electricity demands for thirty four villas is quite high, so we may, which goes against the complete ecological idea is we may well have to have a diesel back-up generator. We are going to do a lot of natural planting, so that we don’t have soil erosion and, also, we will be controlling the storm water that comes off the site as well. AR: Okay, so this is going to be quite a high tech site. RP: Oh, it is a high tech site and we are going to be on broadband internet and we’re having all the gizmos and gadgets that are available. It’s going to be state-of-the-art, very, very up to date... AR: Fantastic. RP: As much as we can make it. T/G 00.07.54.09 CLICK TO: LISTEN WATCH

Koh Samui | swimming pool view

AR: Great. Eh finally, when I come back here next in a few months what would I expect to see? RP: In a few months, you will be seeing, up at the top end of the site, we’ll be commencing the villas on that which is, I’ll turn round this way, which is a very difficult escarpment for us to work on. And also we’ll be working down on the two big building lots down on the front of the beach because the contractor has to start at the front and work his way up. What you will see is columns and hopefully we will already be doing part of the roof structure or some of the suspended concrete slabs. Um, all the pipe work will be buried, which of course, you won’t be able to see and there will be activity all over the site. We are going for a programme by where all the villas effectively get started very sequentially, like a two week apart start we start another building, so that the whole project all finishes at the one time. There is not any point in finishing five house early because you can’t use them cos we won’t have the infrastructure, the services working, so it’s, it’s gonna be, the whole site will be action when you come back in a couple of months. T/C 00.09.02.07 CLICK TO: LISTEN WATCH AR: Fantastic. RP: I look forward to seeing you come back. AR: I look forward to it as well. Thank you for your time Rolly. RP: Thank you for coming to the site Adrian...Cheers.


Royal Samui Beach Online | Video Report 2.0 :

The rumours about the development started a chain reaction. Firstly, the Chairman of RDI visited Hong Kong to reassure the owners that all was well and, secondly, I was commissioned to shoot another video to show that construction was well under way. When I was eventually given the go-ahead to film, some six months later, construction on the site was indeed well under way. Obviously, the developer was taking no chances this time round.   continue to part two of this story...




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