Features

Turkmenistan’s new bridge is benefiting from a novel sealing system that will optimise working life as well as maximising safety. A novel waterproofing solution is being utilised for the Turkmenabat - Farap Bridge in Turkmenistan. The project is of note as the structure is the longest metal span bridge in Central Asia. The client for the project is the state-owned firm Turkmenavtohowayollary, while the general contractor is Altcom Road Construction and the consultant engineer is Soyuztransproekt. Stirling

A major tunnel construction project has been carried out in Mexico, setting a technological precedent for Latin America . Mexican materials giant CEMEX took part in the construction of the Coatzacoalcos Underwater Tunnel in Veracruz, Mexico. This innovative project features large tunnel bores and utilised a complex construction process. As a result of these technical challenges CEMEX was required to design and deliver special concretes so as to allow the construction of the different structures needed to

New developments in tunnelling technologies offer contractors greater efficiencies when constructing new bores. Tunnel boring machines (TBMs) are widely being used in major projects such as the Brenner Base Tunnel in the Austrian Alps. Full face TBMs are highly sophisticated machines featuring a rotating drilling head, which removes the material, and, depending on the type of construction, secures the excavated tunnel with shotcrete, rock bolts and wire mesh or prefabricated segments of reinforced concrete.

Huge numbers of construction machines as well as plant and equipment are working overtime, backed by mammoth manpower, to meet the targeted completion deadline of March 2018 for India’s Eastern Peripheral Expressway (EPE). The 135km arterial route is being built with six lanes and surrounds India’s National Capital, Delhi, its National Capital Region (NCR) and the industrially developed North Indian states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

The Mersey Gateway bridge project off England’s west coast passed a milestone recently with the first joining of two of the deck sections. The key segments, as the sections are called, link the north approach viaduct to the north pylon deck span and are the first of four deck-joins scheduled for this summer. In total, there are five sections of bridge deck and approach roads that need to be joined.

Mexico’s highway infrastructure plays a key role in the country’s economy, carrying around 55% of its freight and 98% of its passenger traffic. To meet this demand, the network has 377,660km of roads in all. This is split between the 49,652km federal highway network, the 83,982km of state roads, 169.429km of rural roads and 74,596km of access roads. mHowever, although the federal road network manages to connect a large part of the country's strategic points, some stretches already present problems with satu

The Fehmarnbelt Tunnel between Denmark and Germany is both ambitious and innovative, explains Susanne Kalmar Pedersen, project director at design engineering firm Ramboll, adviser to the client Fehmarn A/S. The ambitious Fehmarnbelt Tunnel - one of Europe’s largest ongoing infrastructure projects - is a priority project within the EU’s Trans European Network (TEN-T) programme. It will link the German island of Fehmarn with the Danish island of Lolland. The tunnel is an 18km immersed combined road and rail l

Final delivery of the final stretch for Russia’s key highway project looks set to be delayed – Eugene Gerden writes. I now looks as if Russia’s most ambitious project in the field of road building in recent years, the building of a new high-speed road link between Moscow and St Petersburg, the country’s largest cities, will not be complete in time. The project was set up by the Russian government and several private investors. According to initial state plans, building of the new road should have been compl

Highways England’s project manager gives sneak peek into progress on the UK’s biggest road upgrade now under construction. Road construction workers often find interesting buried items when building roads and the UK’s A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon improvement scheme is proving the point. It’s been less than half a year since construction started on the €1.76 billion A14 scheme, Highways England’s largest ongoing project. Highways England is the wholly government-owned company responsible for modernising, main

A key road rebuild contract has been carried out in Zambia by mining firm First Quantum Minerals (FQM). The firm used its own equipment to rebuild a road that connects with its mining operations in Zambia’s North-Western Province. The firm opted to maintain the Chingola-Solwezi road, which had deteriorated to such a state that North-Western Province faced being cut-off from the rest of the country during the rainy season. This was a serious issue for the mining firm as the poor state of the road threatened

Technology from Stirling Lloyd is being used to waterproof the recently constructed Lusail Tunnel in Qatar. The construction of the tunnel is a major project as it forms part of a new US$30 billion integrated transportation system in Qatar. The new Lusail CP07-C-1-A Commercial Boulevard, Road A3 Troughs, Underpass and Tunnel project is designed to provide a connection from the recently established Lusail City to the heart of Doha in Qatar. The cut and cover tunnel provides fast access to the new Lusail City

It was “dirty work” for drainage engineers from Lanes Group in the UK when they recently removed 400tonnes of silt and debris from a culvert in northern England. Before sludge removal started, the 3m-wide concrete box culvert under the A38 on the outskirts of the city of Derby had been full almost to its roof. Lanes Group's East Midlands depot, based in Derby, desilted the culvert in a 17-day operation for North Midland Construction, working for Highways England, under its civil engineering framework.

The Queensferry Crossing forms the centrepiece of a major upgrade to the cross-Forth transport corridor in the east of Scotland. It will be the longest three-tower, cable-stayed bridge in the world and represents a Scottish Government capital investment of more than €1.5 billion. The 2.7km Queensferry Crossing is alongside the Forth Road Bridge and will carry the M90 motorway across the Firth of Forth between Lothian, at South Queensferry, and Fife, at North Queensferry. Each of the three towers are 207m

Deck waterproofing remains critical to a bridge’s structural integrity for its design life, explains Cliff Weston, director of Stirling Lloyd To properly maintain deck waterproofing there must be a willingness to look at solutions based on whole-life costing rather than just short-term initial costs. There are lessons to be learned from examples of prematurely failed infrastructure due to a focus on initial short-term costs.

The New Wear Crossing will be the first bridge to be built over the River Wear in Sunderland, UK, for more than 40 years Raising the bridge’s 100m-tall pylon promised to be a stunning visual sight, but also a tricky operation dictated by extremely variable local weather. World Highways went to press just before the operation, but not before the pylon had arrived by barge on January 7. It had completed a two-day crossing of the often unpredictable North Sea from the Belgian port of Ghent where it was f