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For its new publicity campaign, Volvo Construction Equipment has teamed up with film star hardman Dolph Lundgren to showcase its excavators’ endurance in a stunt-filled mini-movie entitled Pump It Up. In the tongue-in-cheek mini-movie Lundgren, whose credits include Rocky IV, Universal Soldier and The Expendables, plays an all-action drill instructor in an excavator boot camp determined to test the diggers to their limits. Excavators ranging from 1.5t to 95t are ordered to do press-ups, pull-ups, flip

A highway widening project will be carried out on the route connecting Mumbai with Vadodara in India. A 23.4km stretch of the highway will be widened so that it features four lanes in either direction. A finance package worth US$ 132.5 million has been secured to help carry out the project and the work will be handled by IRB Infrastructure Developers (IRB Infra). In addition the National Highway Authority of India will also contribute to the project.

A highway widening project will be carried out on the route connecting Mumbai with Vadodara in India. A 23.4km stretch of the highway will be widened so that it features four lanes in either direction. A finance package worth US$ 132.5 million has been secured to help carry out the project and the work will be handled by IRB Infrastructure Developers (IRB Infra). In addition the National Highway Authority of India will also contribute to the project.

Colombia is establishing an action plan for its infrastructure programme, focussing on sourcing suitable financing. The country’s national road institute, Invias, is looking for US$659.5 million to carry out a series of 26 road resurfacing projects. Work on these commenced as far back as 2004 but numerous stretches remain incomplete and it will take until 2022 for the surfacing operations to be concluded. Meanwhile another new division will oversee the La Linea Tunnel and Ruta Del Sol II projects. The form

A series of road development projects will be carried out in Siberia’s Irktusk Region. The programme of works will be carried out during the 2019-2024 period. Repairs will be carried out to 350km of roads while 200km of new roads will be constructed during the entire programme. In 2019 alone, the plan calls for 140km of roads to be rebuilt.

Uganda’s Jinja Nile Bridge is now open to traffic. Costing US$129 million in all, around $100 million of the funding was supplied by Japan in the form of a loan. The 525m-long bridge features a cable-stayed design, the longest of its type in Uganda and second longest in East Africa after the 680m-long Kigamboni bridge in Tanzania, which also recently opened to traffic. Egypt’s Suez Canal Bridge is the longest cable-stayed type in Africa, measuring 3.9km, followed by the 1.36km Lekki Ikoyi Bridge in Nigeria

A new expressway project is due to commence in China in early 2019. The work is expected to cost US$1.37 billion and involves upgrading the Meiguan Expressway. The work will be carried out over an 8km stretch between the Qinghu Flyover and Meilin Tollgate. The work involves work to 25 tunnels and eight interchange flyovers, as well as a number of pedestrian underpasses and footbridges. The project is planned to utilise the latest 3D and BIM software technology.

The winners in the Bentley Systems awards for excellence in infrastructure have been announced. Final judging took place at the Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2018 conference, held in London. Meeting earlier in the week at the London Hilton Metropole Hotel where the event was held, panels of expert judges selected the winners, having previously pre-selected three projects as key contenders. In the roads category, the Pan Borneo Highway in Malaysia’s Sarawak Region beat tough competition to win over the I-5

Bidding is underway in Slovakia for the R2 Krivan-Mytna expressway project, which is being handled by the local highway firm NDS. The deadline for bids opened in July 2018 and has been extended now for the second time. Bids will now be received until the 9th November 2018. The project for the 9.1km route is expected to cost €280 million to build and should take 48 months to complete. In addition, Slovakia’s Transport and Construction Ministry is boosting its budget for road repairs. The next 48 months will

A major road revamp project is being planned in Russia. The approach routes to the new bridge connecting with Crimea will be improved, boosting capacity, safety and traffic flow. The project will run as part of a series of transport upgrades in the Krasnodar Region, running until 2024 and worth a total of US$1.3 billion. A 136km stretch of the 150km stretch of highway between Krasnodar and Temryuk will be improved, in a bid to meet the anticipated jump in traffic from around 10,000-20,000 vehicles/day at

The Jambatan Bridge project in Malaysia now looks to be revived. The project to construct the 1.4km bridge was first proposed in 2003 but progress then stalled. However new proposals have been put forward for the project, which would replace the existing Johor Causeway. The new link would provide an improved transport connection between Malaysia and Singapore.

The first phase of a major road upgrade project in Dubai has opened to traffic. The project to improve the Latifa bint Hamdan Street and Umm Al Sheef Street routes is worth nearly US$218 million. The second phase of the project should be complete in the first quarter of 2019. Once the work is finished it should lower journey times between Al Khalil Road and Sheikh Zayed Road, two of the most important highway arteries in Dubai. The project includes the construction of two bridge sections measuring a total

Work is due to commence on the construction of a test stretch of electric highway in Germany. The innovative eHighway trial route will be built along a 5km stretch of the busy A1 Autobahn route from Reinfeld to Lübeck to the north of the German city of Hamburg. The €19 million project is being funded by Germany’s Federal Government. The aim of the project is to test the use of electrically-powered trucks on Germany’s major routes. The plans call for the installation of overhead power lines to drive the