Features

An Interview with PRS-Med’s VP of Business Development and Marketing Hadas Levin by Chris Kelsey The year 1977 has become a watershed year for polymeric construction materials. Dr. J.P. Giroud coined the terms ‘geotextile’ and ‘geomembrane’ in a key paper at the First International Conference on Geosynthetics; and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) published a report on its testing of cellular confinement systems (first undertaken in Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1975). The investigations in Mis

A novel approach to utilities installation will lengthen the life of Helsinki's streets, reports Mike Woof. A major utilities project in Finnish capital Helsinki will offer huge benefits for the city's streets and traffic flow rates in years to come. A new tunnel system is being excavated under Helsinki for the power company Helsingin Energia, although this will be co-owned by the city. Called the Common Utility Tunnel (Meilahti-Pasilak-Käpylä LU2), the excavations form an extensive network spreading out un

ECED's first Dealers' Conference in April during Intermat resulted in "a tremendous success and solid future outlook for the association". The president of the European Confederation of Equipment Distributors (ECED), Dr. José Gameiro, said the gravity of the current crisis is "the worst in the past 50 years, with a devastating effect on equipment distribution for public works and civil construction."

An alliance of companies has come together to realise major infrastructure projects in Latvia including its biggest bridge. Patrick Smith reports. Riga, the Latvian capital, has the finest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe and its centre is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The city of some 750,000 people (the country's total population is 2.2 million) is bounded to the south by Lithuania and to the north by Estonia, and is the second largest in Baltic States. To the east is Russia and Belarus.

An innovative solution was put forward to support slip roads on a Dutch motorway. Patrick Smith reports. The 2010 opening of the A7 motorway extension on the southern ring road of the city of Sneek, The Netherlands, brings an end to local traffic misery. By using innovative Tensar Geocell Foundation Mattress technology over weak estuarine clay, MNO-Vervat Noord, the main contractor, constructed a key junction and its slip roads in weeks instead of months, with considerable cost savings.

Russian operator company NCC (Nevskaya Concession Company) has placed an order with German manufacturer Herrenknecht for the world's largest tunnel boring machine (TBM). The Mixshield TBM, for construction of the Orlovski Tunnel, "will surpass all previous TBMs" with a diameter of 19.25m and it is designed to construct a mega-tunnel to link both halves of the centre of Russia's second city St Petersburg under the River Neva and speed up traffic.

Praslin, the second-largest of the Seychelles Islands with roughly 6,500 inhabitants, is a tropical paradise of white sandy beaches, dense jungle and crystal clear seas. Tourism is the island's main source of income, and luxury tourism at that. A road had to be diverted for a new five-star hotel and property development project which will create jobs for around 400 people. The road would have obstructed the residents' access to the sea. Sey-Afrique Exporters from Pinetown, South Africa, won the contra

The new Hyderabad Outer Ring Road (ORR) project is a 158km eight-lane highway encircling the Andhra Pradesh city. It has been designed to relieve congestion in and around the city and to act as a hub for accessing India's national highway network, and is being built for the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority. Indian contractor Ramky Infrastructure is relying on an Atlas Copco MB 1700 hydraulic breaker to break granite as aggregates at a quarry site adjacent to the new road. The rock is bein