Six months’ worth of work on the $5 billion Heart of Europe project was completed within the peak four months of coronavirus, according to Jozef Kleindeinst, CEO of Kleindeinst Group, the company behind the ambitious development.

As soon as the pandemic struck the UAE, a decision was taken to move around 1,200 staff members onto the island, to allow work to continue in a safe and secure environment.

Kleindeinst, who also moved into one of the super-luxury villas on the development’s Sweden Island, explained: “The labourers were happy; the engineers and architects who were working here, around 100 people, were not so happy about it and they complained that their families were in Dubai and how they can stay on the island.

“But we did not see much of a choice. We said, either we do it 100 percent, then we eliminate the risk anyone can bring us this virus.”

For the complete month of lockdown, Kleindeinst revealed that there was a marked uptick in productivity, largely due to over-time offered through a performance-driven system implemented on the islands.

He explained: “Our productivity during coronavirus improved. We had around 1,200 people here. The same number of people did more work. In four months of island lockdown we did the work of six months. After we opened the island again we saw immediately it came back to the old levels. We could not maintain this high level of work without lockdown.”

Currently 2,000 guest rooms are being built as part of the first phase of the development, with handover scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year and Q1 2021.

This includes ten luxury palaces on Sweden Island, 32 luxury villas on Germany Island, 131 floating seahorse villas, Honeymoon Island and Portofino Hotel, with 489 keys.

Kleindeinst also said that the logistics side of the business escaped unscathed from the clutches of coronavirus, which included operating a barge with 2,000 tonnes of equipment and resources going backwards and forward to the Dubai mainland every day.

“It was business as usual and we did more. Thank God we could maintain our supply chain because everything here on the island we need to bring it in from the market. Every day we bring water, we bring diesel, sand and aggregate, cement. Every single tile we need to bring,” he said.

Construction work has started on phase two of the development, which will include Switzerland Island, a Venetian-style Lido resort and Marbella Hotel, with the entire project scheduled to complete by 2023.

Kleindeinst has previously been criticised by contractors who had alleged non-payment for word completed. However, he said: “I have a main contractor the main contractor has sub-contractors, I’m not interfering in their relations, that’s not my business.”