An indigenous oil firm, Nestoil Plc, has awarded the contract for the building of its new ultra-modern office headquarters to Julius Berger Nigeria at a whopping cost of N24 billion and a completion time frame of 25 months from date of signing. The office building is to be located on Akin Adesola Street, Victoria Island, Lagos.

In October 2010, the Nestoil Group entrusted ACCL Ltd in cooperation with JBN/Bilfinger Berger Nigeria on the basis of a preconstruction agreement with a design conception of a combination use development of offices, parking and living.

The approximately 75 meters high building offers Nestoil a gross floor area of 32.300m2. The site is located in the centre of Victoria Island, at the junction of Akin Adesola Street, which connects Bar Beach in the South with Falomo Bridge in the North, and Saka Tinubu Street.

The Lagos Nestoil Tower is based on a combined pile raft foundation bored piles with a maximum depth of 54 meters and a foundation slab with a thickness of 1.8 meters.

Due to the high ground water level a secant bore pile wall and a jet-grouting plug are necessary to prevent the building pit from flooding.

The 15 floors provide 9 stories of parking, 19 apartments on 5 levels and 14 office floors including one executive office floor all topped by a helipad and a building crown, which turns the highrise- building to a real landmark in the Victoria Island skyline.

The Nestoil Group wants to achieve a LEED certification for the Nestoil Tower. This will increase the attractiveness especially for international tenants as the LEED certification brings the sustainability and awareness of responsibility for the present but also for the future generations to Nigeria.

The President/ Chief Executive Officer of Nestoil, Dr Ernest Azudialu, and the Managing Director of Julius Berger Nigeria, Wolfgang Goetsch, formerly signed the contract at the Julius Berger headquarters in Abuja.

In his brief remarks before the signing of the contract papers, Azudialu revealed that the idea of building a befitting headquarters for Nestoil started many years ago but never really took off until a few years ago when the idea began to take form.

“The board of Nestoil decided to build something different and befitting, a building that will show the Oil & Gas industry in Sub-Saharan Africa in a different perspective.”

According to him, in the quest to get the best, the company went to great lengths “from what we can see from the model of the building it took a lot for us to get to this level and even to the construction stage where it is today. It took a lot of trips to Wiesbaden Germany for reviews, to choose materials and also to examine what it takes to build a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, LEED certified structure (LEED is an internationally recognized green building programme).

“Today is a signing ceremony and is not going to be a speech making day but for us on the Nestoil side this is a very big milestone to have been able to get this project to this stage. We are looking forward to making sure that at the end of the day this building is delivered both on schedule and to world-class standards.

“From the construction work progressing on site which has been visited by other directors and shareholders of Nestoil, we can say that we are very pleased and we commend Julius Berger having done a good job so far to continue in that line for the next 20-25 months when the building should be completed. We expect that the building we be completed by the 1st quarter or before the middle of 2015”.