Road Structures

The tender process is opening for a new road project in Panama to connect Veracruz with Vacamonte, as well as for a new bridge. The new road and bridge link will be in Arraijan, in Panama’s Oeste Province. The tender process is being managed by Panama’s Ministry of Public Works (MOP). The new bridge will span the Bique River.

Two road upgrade contracts in Tanzania have been awarded to four Chinese construction firms. In all the work will be worth some US$312.74 million and will extend to 432km of road improvements.

A new road tunnel project is planned for the northern German city of Hamburg. The 1.5km tunnel will form the third stage of the A26 Autobahn project and will connect with the A1 route. Construction is expected to cost around €200 million but work on the new tunnel will not commence until 2023.

Spanish contractor FCC has been awarded a contract to carry out key road upgrade works in Nicaragua. The €32 million project will see improvements being carried out on the 39km route connecting Los Chinamos with El Ayote.

Planning is being carried out for the new Mombasa Gate Bridge project, which is expected to cost close to US$778 million. The bridge will connect Mombasa Island with the South Coast, replacing a ferry operation, which first began operation in 1937. The feasibility study for the 1.4km bridge is now complete and construction of the link is expected to take 36 months to complete.

Colombia’s massive road and highway development programme is still moving ahead, with a series of major concession projects due for completion by 2020. A consortium titled Via al Mar is on track to finish construction of the Cartagena-Barranquilla highway in August 2019, for which the company has a 25-year concession agreement. The tender process for the final stretches of the Ruta del Sol II highway will commence shortly.

A South Korean contractor will carry out construction work on a project in Mozambique. The package of works is worth US$44.1 million and will be carried out by the South Korean contractor, POSCO Engineering & Construction (POSCO E&C). The contract was awarded by the Mozambique Government and will see the upgrading of a 70km road that is unsurfaced at present. The work will take 30 months to complete and the contractor will pave and widen the road link, boosting traffic speeds, capacity and safety on the rou

CPB Contractors has achieved contractual close on Melbourne’s planned 5km West Gate Tunnel, originally called the Western Distributor. The road will link the West Gate Freeway at Yarraville, a suburb of Melbourne, with the tolled CityLink road network at Docklands via a tunnel beneath Yarraville.

Work will restart on the 15.2km D1 bypass around the Slovakian town of Ružomberok after the government and contractors amended the contract. The consortium of OHL ZS and Vahostav-SK and the National Highway Company (NDS) recently signed and addendum to the contract that includes an extension of section’s Čebrať tunnel by1.6km to 3.6km and shortening of the road by around 300m. Because of continuing geological concern, NDS had earlier decided to reroute the road and the tunnel. As a result, the cost of the