Ma'agan Michael and Tardion: two projects, two regional councils

A municipality builds inside a city: there is infrastructure, there are water and sewage lines, there are roads and there is an engineering department sitting across the street. A regional council builds in open country — sometimes a single building, at a distance from everything else, with infrastructure that has to be brought to it.

Two Tawfik Zidan Ltd projects under construction for regional councils illustrate this:

A school in a kibbutz: the schedule is the school year

The Ma'agan Michael school is being built for the Hof HaCarmel regional council. An education building is not handed over in parts — it is handed over as one unit, and its handover date is not negotiable: it is the first day of the school year.

A regional school carries one further factor no urban school has: pupils arrive by bus from several localities, so access routes, drop-off areas and the safety around them are part of the project rather than an appendix to it.

Like every new education building, it is built with protected spaces under the Civil Defence (Shelter Construction Specifications) Regulations and Home Front Command guidance. Another of the company's education projects — the Gliliot campus in Nesher — is covered in its own article.

Tardion: commerce and offices in an industrial park

Tardion is a commercial centre and an office building in the Tardion industrial park in Misgav, for the Misgav regional council. It is a project of two building types whose requirements differ:

• A commercial centre — shopfronts, public occupancy, evacuation routes, loading and unloading, and system connections to each unit separately.
• An office building — flexible planning for tenants not yet known, and therefore systems built for future subdivision.

The industrial park is also context: a building inside an active park rises amid tanker traffic, trucks and workers, and safety management there is not the same as on a closed site in a residential neighbourhood. On construction-site safety — who is responsible, what is required and what is inspected — see the article on safety.

A regional council as client: what it means in practice

The work is awarded by tender, under the Mandatory Tenders Law, 5752-1992, and the condition for participating is a registered, suitable contractor classification in the branch and at the scope required. Then there is a supervisor on the client's behalf and performance guarantees. The Sale (Apartments) Law does not apply — there is no buyer. Classification is explained in the article on it.

The difference between a regional council and a municipality is not in the legal framework but in the ground conditions: wide geographic dispersion, infrastructure that does not necessarily reach the fence, and a setting that is not urban.

Reach in the north and along the coast

Hof HaCarmel and Misgav join the company's projects in the north — Nazareth, Nof HaGalil, Kiryat Ata, Migdal HaEmek, Akko, Yokneam, Nesher, Afula and Haifa. The full list of public buildings is in the article on them, and all the projects on the projects page.