News

The Italian contractor CMC Di Ravenna (CMC) will handle a series of road upgrades in Zambia. In all the Italian company will repair, improve and upgraded 292km of roads. Asphalt surfacing will be laid on the Kabwe to Piccadilly Circus and Mpula to Mansansa roads in Central Province. The project includes upgrades to 20km of urban roads in Mkushi and Kabwe. The Zambian Government of Zambia awarded the contract to CMC through the country’s Road Development Authority (RDA).

Global US infrastructure firm Jacobs Engineering Group and one of its main rivals, CH2M, are to merge under a US$3.27 billion deal. In a written statement, Jacobs said it will acquire all of the outstanding shares of CH2M in a cash and stock transaction, including around $416 million of CH2M debt. CH2M had global revenue in the past 12 months of around $4.4 billion and about 20,000 employees. Its contracts are in the water, transportation, environmental and nuclear sectors.

On Aug 1st 2017, it was 10 years since the I-35W Bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. The bridge had been classified as structurally deficient and was undergoing repair at the time. However the repairs focussed on the decking rather than the structure, with the additional weight of the extra asphalt layers and the construction machinery parked adding to the total load and contributing to the collapse.

Major road and highway development will be seen in India as the country boosts its network. Meanwhile plans are also moving ahead for a major new bridge project in India. The highways development programme will see 15,000km of National Highways being built across India in the 2017/2018 period. This is a key increase from previous years. So far, 2,269km of the National Highways road construction links targeted for the 2017-2018 period have been built. During the 2016-2017 period, 8,231km of National Highways

German building materials producer HeidelbergCement and Aachen2222 University of Applied Sciences are investigating the absorption of CO² from flue gas by olivine and basalt. The carbonised minerals could be used as a value-added additive in the production of building materials.

Road safety in Vietnam is showing continued signs of improvement, a major step forward in Asia where road crashes are a serious problem. Across most of Asia, road deaths are increasing as vehicle ownership grows but Vietnam is bucking the trend and lowering the annual death toll. The latest data from Vietnam’s National Committee for Traffic Safety reveals that traffic deaths, crashes and injuries were all reduce in the period from January to July 2017.

The Guatemala Government is now working on a plan to address the deficiencies in the country’s road network. Key issues include reforming State Procurement Law, giving greater authority to the general road agency, Direccion General de Caminos (DGC) and the Army Engineers Group, and stopping road projects that face serious problems.

A joint venture of BAM, Morgan Sindall and VolkerFitzpatrick has started refurbishing the Oldbury viaduct on the UK’s M5 motorway. The €112 million project will see repairs to a 3.5km stretch between junctions 1 and 2 of the motorway – one of the UK’s busiest routes – to the west of Birmingham city. Work is being done in three phases starting with the removal of the road surface on the southbound carriageway to investigate the condition of the concrete deck.

The Spanish government has given the green light for the state-owned transport infrastructure firm Seittsa to manage nine bankrupt toll motorways. The deal is for Seittsa to prepare the terms for their retender to private companies by the end of next year. Spanish media report that the cost is set to be lower than the €3.5 billion previously estimated by some analysts. The arrangement comes after three years of failed attempts by the government to step in and facilitate debt restructuring between the invest

Dutch construction company Ballast Nedam along with Belgian dredging company Deme and Australian investment bank Macquarie have won the Blankenburgtunnel tender in the Netherlands. The consortium - BAAK Blankenburg-Verbinding - will build the tunnel under the Nieuwe Waterweg river west of Vlaardingen, a city in southern Holland and on the north bank of the river Nieuwe Maas where it meets the Oude Maas.